Badly behaved children getting all the rewards at school

[magicgoldpot]

This really annoys me and I would appreciate it if any teachers on here could give me an answer as to why this happens.

My ds started reception a few weeks ago and every single day I've collected him the teacher says how well behaved he has been. She's even referred to him as a 'star pupil'.

Ds came home saying Ben ( not real name ) pushed him hard in the back and he fell and grazed his knee and hand. Next day Ben wouldn't do what the teacher said and so the teacher shouted and it scared ds. Other incidents too and not just with Ben.

Anyway, at pick up Ben comes out first and proudly shows his Mum he has 2 stickers, so do a few others. For good listening apparently! Ds comes out and has no stickers but I am told by the teacher he's been amazing today.

This has happened a few times and ds asked me yesterday if he will get a sticker one day. He says Ben always gets one but he's naughty. I told ds do not copy what Ben is doing as that is not the way to get a sticker/ reward. You will get one one day.

So why do teachers reward 'naughty' children for the slightest bit of good behavior, when the children who are always good and follow the rules get nothing?

Just buy your own stickers for when he gets home.
In the first week of school my 6 year old came home with a paper to.practice her letters. She told me the child who did the best would get a kinder surprise. It's all she talked about the whole weekend.
Her writing is atrocious. No matter how hard she had worked I knew she wouldn't get one.
I told her you work hard and write the letters neatly and I'll get you a kinder egg.
And I did.
She went back to school all excited wanting to find out if she had got an egg. The teacher didnt even ask for the work. She missed two days at the end of the week because she had a cough, but the days she has been back she hasn't noticed anyone winning the kinder egg.

Quite @BeingATwatItsABingThing this leapt out at me too.

Both mine were very well behaved, because I had always instilled good manners and behaviour.

There is always one. Sigh. We have instituted a smug pinch in our house for such self-delusion. Those judgy pants must be cutting off your circulation.

I had the disruptive child and I have the well behaved child. Some upbringing, same manners. Different children with different needs and challenges.

I would say though that it doesn’t have to be like that. Our school does a points system which both my kids are motivated by. Both have received awards, stickers etc. My ‘good’ child has received a higher level which would reflect her behaviour and motivation in class. However by the end of the school year everyone has something.

The system can work if the teacher has an appropriate level of rewards.

ladyofthemanners oh the irony of your name

Appropriate level of reward for each child I mean

@SionnachRua I totally agree of the "good week for them". I have a soft spot for the children with challenging behaviours. They may appear to other parents to get stickers more often but I guarantee they have a lot more challenges. I'm a firm believer in that every child needs to be treated as an individual. Even as adults we praise people when they exceed their limits. I've a bad back and exercise is difficult for me. I went for a 5mile walk with the baby yesterday. When I got home my DH said fair play to me and that it must have been tough. To someone else they would think its patronising and of course it's easy to walk 5 miles. But not me and I really appreciated my DH recognising it was an achievement for me.
We do it all the time,not just in school.

My 2 are 19 and 16 and this happens Ed throughout their school lives. You may aswell get used to it. Explain to your kids the reasoning behind it so that they don't expect a sticker, and give them your own rewards

Yep this us how it is.

Dd1 never got star of the week.but she was part if the well behaved forgotten middle.

You try and explain it to them but end if day it is quite hard to make 5 and six year olds understand when they never get anything then someone behaves fir 5 mins and gets star of the week.

Tbh i was more worried when dd2 did get it. Although to he fair there was a week or 2 left of the school year and everyone else had had it so was more a rushed afterthought "shit this girl hasn't had anything yet" kinda assignment

Always told my kids to ignore it tbh

Some children's behaviour is extremely challenging and draining and as a teacher you will do anything to get them through the day as painlessly as possible.

All children benefit from freeing up the teacher's time to actually teach a lesson. Rather than trying to stop little Billy running around the room, switching off the computer, throwing things at other DC randomly, climbing over the furniture etc.

If your DC is upset about something at school, just talk to the teacher about it. Stop worrying yourself with what other children are doing.

You have to see the sticker as part of the learning. So in reception the early years framework includes social development not just reading and writing. Its very likely you covered this bit of the framework at home and used incentives but some children are still learning in this area. Its not much different than a child strugglung with reading getting extra interventions but the reward here is they get a new reading book.
It is tough and some schools handle this better than others but its very early days

"Naughty" children may have a lot more going on. Rewards are commonly used for autistic children for instance to help with behaviour. Adhd again rewards are common to promote cooperation. It might not seem fair but the stickers are for those who need extra support

It has always been like this and children cop on quite quickly ime. Years ago my dc and friends called them the naughty stickers. I guess the teachers have to give difficult children an incentive, something to lose to encourage them to behave.

It might not seem fair but the stickers are for those who need extra support

You are assuming all the other kids who dont mis behave find it easy to do so.

Some of those children might work there arses off trying to behave and yet get no recognition at all for it.

Surely its not an either/or situation. You can make sure that good behaviour is recognised in everyone ?

It is past of a push around researching good behaviours. I question this approach, as I say to the MOE advisors here, I have never had a police car stop me to reward me for great driving/not speeding/ playing on my phone while driving, nor paying my rates on time.

I wonder if this model of rewarding children sets them up failure as an adult when they realise there are no obvious rewards for following rules. I’ve had parents challenge me about this, I simply tell them it’s policy. I also notice that if a child with these rewards is overlooked for even the smallest amount of time the behaviours reappear and fast.

I’m glad DD has left a primary like this. It wasn’t just stickers though, it was all sorts of treats and even trips.
DD has confidence issues and actually a bit of recognition helps enormously with her. Every year I would talk to the teacher, she would get pupil of the week or sticker and the teacher would say what a difference! Then nothing for rest of the year.
Strangely the badly behaved kids haven’t improved going into secondary. And they don’t reward bad behaviour in those round here. They do get points for good behaviour and she’s had lots of those already.
One of the boys in her year punched someone in the head (after many incidences of hitting) and then got taken in a special trip the next day. The mother of the boy went in to complain and was told ‘they didn’t want to disappoint him’, the mother had to threaten the police for them to do something (and only at this point did the hitting stop).

I’ve had this conservation with my kids a hundred times. It’s really frustrating but it will continue until they’re at least 16 so they’re going to have to get used to it.

I’ve always told my kids it’s because the other kids need extra support but they (my girls) have already been blessed with good behaviour and a fast working brain so they don’t need extra blessings.

Part of a push into promoting

Goodness knows what happened with predictive text .. apologies

You try and explain it to them but end if day it is quite hard to make 5 and six year olds understand when they never get anything then someone behaves fir 5 mins and gets star of the week. we’ll ask the teacher to make understanding this concept THEIR target. I have both extremely able and disabled children. In my experience children get that “one size fits all” isn’t fair at all. There parents struggle a bit more. Evolve people treating everyone “the same” has no place in the modern world.

Yes, a boy in my son's old school had behaviour problems and used to smash up the classroom and hit teachers and staff. He would be removed and go to watch films and make cakes, which they were just doing to calm him down and wasn't great for him as he wasn't doing the majority of his lessons, but to the other kids in the class it looks like he was being rewarded and my son who was well behaved would ask why he can't do that. I brought it up with the school and they started letting the ones who had worked hard all week have a treat in a separate room such as making cakes or ordering pizza to the school.

K

Its not just stickers. The boy who has already bullied my don since he came back and had several detentions has become head boy.

I suppose it's the fact that ds was so excited about the stickers as it was something the teacher told them would happen the next week. Something exciting for them to look forward to.

I will buy a pack of stickers and if ds has been good all week I will let him choose one. I think a sticker from his teacher would mean more to him but I will still do it.

I was that child at school who was always good and kind of disappeared into the background. I was never praised in front of my class or in any assembly. I always remember we had to clap for Tom when he sat nicely all day and watch as he got rewarded for not hitting anyone at break time ( seriously) it just brings back shit memories really.

Perhaps if you’d tried as hard as Tom you would have been rewarded?

I wonder if this model of rewarding children sets them up failure as an adult when they realise there are no obvious rewards for following rules

I've wondered this too.

I've always tried to teach mine to be happy for others but on one hand you get kids being rewarded every 5 mins and often for things that are quite standard expectations really and then if your kid isn't one of those who get rewarded but they excellent at say sports day theb eveeyone else is getting well done and stickers too there so not to upset them and then the individual wins and individual achievements aren't recognised.

For instance at dds school fir sports day its all house points so no one who ran a good race would be recognised uts basically unoticed if you win ajd sometimes its pre decided who would get the finishing sticker or no one pays attention so if you came third you could be left with nothing as they thought someone else did ( yes that's happened to dd before ) and then its all just added up and the house wins.

Whole thing is really quite demoralising. In desperation to not make other kids feel upset kids individual talents arent always rewarded then kids get rewards fir seemingly nothing

@BeingATwatItsABingThing

Queue chav mum shouting at me asking did I mean her child, and me saying, why would you think that, is it because you know you've taught your child to be as ignorant and rude to teachers as you are?

Queue chav mum? Could you sound more bitchy and judgemental?

Also, you were ignorant and rude to the teacher so I don’t know why you thought you had the moral high ground.

In what way was I ignorant or rude? It was a situation where we all took it in turns to walk round the classroom, look at their work and then a mad dash to get 2 seconds with the teacher. I was just sick of two very disillusioned upset kids who tried the very hardest to be noticed and got nowhere. As someone else said, it can be soul destroying to middle of the road kids to be ignored time and again and frankly, I don't find it rude to stick up for my DCs.

And she was a chavvy mum, she was always swearing and spitting and being rude to others, she was told so many times not to smoke in the playground or bring groups of others to school (I'm talking 15 people, mainly older teens) and not to bring her dog as it would snarl and scare the children. I speak as I find and she was just rude and you could tell why her child was such a little thug.
He threw a large dinosaur toy at DD once because she got a question right. She ended up with a black eye. Guess who got a sticker for being good that day- it wasn't DD.

I get they have to try and pick up the slack of that type of parent, I really do. And as the parent of a child with Aspergers I should know better than most about positive reinforcement. But I don't because mine know how to conduct themselves and all positive reinforcement has its limits and some children would do better with a firm reinforcement and temporary suspensions if they can't behave time and again. That specific child's behaviour was dangerous.

And as I said, there was no negative comeback to me when I said what I said. I never mentioned her child but clearly she recognised her child's behaviour- meaning she was very obviously aware of it but couldn't be bothered.

I totally understand that some parents do try their upmost and behaviour issues are the cause and I feel for those parents but I do believe all children can learn with guidance that is continuous and quickly instigated. It's certainly worked with DS.

Yeah, don’t worry, the naughty kids get stickers and gold stars, but the hardworking kids get the GCSEs and A levels results

So accept it, in the knowledge it’s a tool created to try and manage the more difficult kids