To consider treating children for getting good reports.

[bonzoed]

We had parents evening today for 6 and 4 year old. Both had excellent reports both academically and for their kind natures.

DH wants to treat them for their good reports. I'm not so sure. Am I being a bit mean? I suspect that I am thinking of the girls at school that had surprise gifts such as watches, cameras or cars after doing well at exams. These gifts didn't act as motivation because they were surprise rewards.

Obviously DH is thinking more of a cinema trip. AIBU to think this might be a poor precedent to set?

I think given the level of rewards that most people are giving here, it's not a case that the children are only working hard or behaving nicely in order to get whatever the item or treat is. They are doing it because of the manner in which it is given and the spirit that it represents. I don't believe that children will aim for a good report either for the physical reward or for how it makes them feel per se. What makes it feel good is the feeling that others are pleased and proud of them. So whether the reward is physical/tangible or not, you are providing an emotional reward regardless.

So saying that you are encouraging them to work hard for themselves by not giving them a gift or treat doesn't stack up for me.

I choose to represent my pleasure and pride in them with a token gift for their achievements. That doesn't make me a bad person and it doesn't make them money grasping people either.

I've been doing this since they were 5 and they are no in High school still working hard and behaving well. Is it down to the treats?, no it isn't, they would still do it regardless becasue they get the emotional feedback. Will I still treat them?, yes, becasue it makes me feel good to reward them and it makes them feel good too.

We do little treats after things like that, pizza delivered from the shop in a box!! is the treat of choice in this house :o

I reward the attitude and the effort rather than the achievement.

Praising both effort and achievement is wonderful, but be warned that if over time it develops into competitiveness between your 2 DC, and perceived punishment for lower achievement (which can be hard to distinguish from effort), it can become very negative. My parents used to give my brother and I a certain amount of money for every 'A' and a lesser amount for every 'B' on our report cards. Sounds OK at first, but? I always ended up getting more. I just liked school more and was more academically inclined. I don't know how hard he was trying, but although I did work hard I certainly didn't find it a chore; I enjoyed it. He was struggling. It became very uncomfortable. I felt guilty for my success. He felt crap about his - relative - failure. We never said anything, but we both ended up wishing our parents weren't doing the present 'rewards', and instead would just say something nice about the good marks and discuss how to help with the less good ones.

They are only 4 and 6- most children get excellent reports at that age because teachers are kind and want to be encouraging.

And many children then get more differentiated reports when they get older and teachers start expecting more. This doesn't necessarily mean the child has changed or is suddenly doing something wrong.

Ds is the same lazy but pleasant child he has always been: his infant school reports make delightful reading, his secondary school reports rather less so. Would have been difficult to know when to start withdrawing treats when ds himself hasn't actually been doing anything different.

I think there is a middle ground. My son has devloped a love of learning and pride in his efforts without constant reward. I think I would use the term 'appreciation' when I treat him. We're going to treat out children ocassionally are we? So we do it when they're being 'good' (however you view what good means) rather than when they're not really making an effort.

My son doesn't expect his school to reward him for learning, and he won't expect his boss to treat him for doing his job. My MUM bought me some flowers when I got a promotion, and I can tell you absolutely honestly that it made my day that someone out there acknowledged the effort. I want to instill THAT feeling into my children, so that one day, while they're working hard for people that think 'reward' is for pussies, that someone appreciates his efforts, and likewise, he will be the guy who randomly shows his appreciation to others.

I am sorry, I've not read the book, but so far, my way is working, and my son works hard without expectation of reward but knows he is appreciated, and I feel that is the best motivation, appreciation.

Bloody hell, I'm glad some of you people weren't my parents! Of course there's nothing wrong with rewarding children for achieving things which require effort and dedication - if working (especially in a role and an environment you have no choice in) constitutes a reward in and of itself, why the hell do most adults expect to be paid anything more than subsistence wages to do it?

My father always told my brother and me that we would be working for him for as long as we were actively studying (rather than just existing in the education system); if we performed to the best of our ability, our parents would support and reward us to the best of their ability. Although my brother and I have achieved very different things, I know that my parents' approach instilled excellent work ethics in both of us. I got perfect GCSE results in my area of interest (literally 100%, medal from exam board and everything), perfect A level results, first class marks for every module in my very challenging degree, many prizes for exceptional academic achievement and a highly sought after studentship to continue researching in my area (which is what I'm doing now). I also held down three very challenging jobs throughout college, and continued to work all the way through university and my studentship despite not needing to do so. My brother isn't as academically gifted as me, but he has made such a good impression on his current employer that (in less than a year) he has gone from basic spreadsheet work for a huge and successful company to being promoted into a statistician's role which would normally be reserved for experienced graduates, and his appraisals so far have been absolutely glowing.

Neither of us has found rewards to be demotivating or disincentivising - on the contrary, they kept us focused on achieving highly at points in our education when our courses and schools made us hate having to be there, and they taught us that there is a value to good work (regardless of whether your employer/teacher acknowledges it as fully as they should do). If schools rewarded children appropriately (i.e. quickly and in proportion with their achievement) then this would not be so important, but they simply do not perform that role.

(NB - I'm not suggesting that it's a good idea to reward children for handing in homework on time etc, I'm referring to a treat at the end of a successful term or following a really exceptional piece of work/display of dedication and resilience.)

aldiwhore I agree. My son struggles academically at the moment whereas his older sister finds things much easier and is doing really well. However, they both put in as much effort and both get special treats when they achieve something that they have worked hard for.

It is the effort which is being recognised, not the level of achievement and I think it is important for them to know that I appreciate that.

You would both have done that anyway Nom-it doesn't make any difference. Mine all have a work ethic-they have vastly different results, but they all try their best because that is the way they are, it is the way we are as a family.

There is quite a lot of evidence to support rewarding effort but not much to support rewarding achievement. I am struggling with this myself. I want my son to do well in his GCSEs but I don't feel I should reward him for it: the reward will be his when he impresses a future university or employer with good grades. He should, at 16, be mature enough to appreciate this himself.

A bit different from the OP's situation with much younger children, though!

Aww, it's just a trip to the cinema, not a playstation or something ridiculous like that. We used to get a takeaway on reports day :o

I tend not to reward good reports or good parents evenings - doing well should be a reward in itself.

Children need to be working for their own benefit - not to please mum and Dad.

bunny, as a young child, what is the benefit to them other than the thought that they have pleased someone?

ExoticFruits - I can't speak for my brother but I definitely wouldn't have achieved so highly without the rewards my parents gave me. Praise didn't mean very much to me as a child because it has no direct benefit to me, whereas access to things I enjoyed did mean something - having big collections of books, a Kindle, a really nice electric guitar etc meant that I saw some immediate benefit to my work which also helped me to develop further.

Also, the rewards helped me to see that my hard work was noticed and valued even when I was having a shit time and felt really isolated. To give you a recent example - I've been very ill from overwork for a while, and that is making it much harder to keep up with some of the more grueling areas of my work. I recently got a really good result (far better than anybody could have expected in the circumstances) and mentioned it to my parents on the phone. A few days later, a couple of charms for my silver bracelet turned up in the post, which was a huge and very lovely surprise. They're beautiful and I really like having them, but more importantly they're always on my wrist as a reminder that my family understands and appreciates how much I am putting into what I do, and it's helpful to have that in moments when I feel completely shut off from everybody by the fact that I'm having to miss important family/leisure things in order to get everything done on time.

I could think back all the way through to the start of primary school and tell you precisely which achievements were rewarded with which presents, starting with the geode and dinosaur audiobook they got me when I put loads of work into producing a project at age 3. In fact, I probably wouldn't remember that I'd achieved lots of exceptional things if they hadn't marked out the "special" ones to me with rewards - I've always had a tendency to perceive myself as pretty average, and it helps to have things around me which remind me that I'm wrong about that (I say as I look at a paperweight on my desk, and suddenly remember that the reason I love it is that it was bought for trying really hard at an extension level SATS paper).

Abra, you could howevere reward him for studying hard and not wasting his time on an xbox or something rather than the specific scores he gets.

Just to add - I'm not saying that NOT rewarding is necessarily harmful (I can't comment on that), but I don't think that well thought out and measured rewards are harmful as long as they're rewarding effort. I also don't understand why good work should be regarded as a reward in and of itself - again, if that was the case, there would be no need for payment above the minimum wage...

We always make a fuss of hard work and yes, we celebrate achievements as much as we learn from failures.
Kids love to know their parents are proud of them, whatever it's for.
I wouldn't agonise over it though. What a sad place the world would be without spontaneous treats and a good old fashioned slap on the back, whatever its form.

Bunny - young children do not necessarily appreciate that working hard benefits them. My DS (6) cannot understand why he has to learn to read. He does however realise that effort brings about praise and reward from me (and his teacher) and that will hopefully keep him motivated and help him to achieve. The school puts a lot of time and effort into incentives and rewards system and I try to back this up by the special little treats they get at home.

Maybe it is just what you get used to as a child and your personality. Reading opened up a whole new world for me and I knew why I wanted to read from when I first toddled-apparently I gave any adult sitting down a book to read to me. I wanted to do well in exams-offering rewards wasn't going to make me try harder-I was already trying my hardest.
I think that a young child would struggle to separate effort from success, and even if you are rewarding effort they may not know this.
It also seems to open a can of worms to me if you get siblings of very different personalities and abilities. It is difficult not to give the impression that you value academic ability more highly than anything else.

The problem with rewarding for effort is it can be quite hard to judge how much of an effort has actually been put in.

I was totally uninterested in school work and hardly had a work ethic at all, but it so happened that my out of school interests of reading and history fed into my school work and that I had plenty of natural ability, so I got top marks with a minimum of effort.

I can't count the number of times when I arrived at school blissfully unaware of the homework that had been set, but was able to wing it and get full marks because I was naturally verbal and able to think on my feet. I often got thanked for my hard work when I hadn't in fact done any preparation at all and would have been quite uncapable of remembering what preparation was required. Work ethic? I think not.

My db otoh had practical interests which didn't do anything for his marks at school (but have enabled him to run a successful business in later years).

So which one of us should have been rewarded? In fact, neither of us deserved it, but it would have been impossible for my parents to prove I didn't. It looked good, it sounded good, but it was not effort.

I was good at fooling people with effort too. There were times at school that I got top marks for effort where I hadn't tried at all!
If you are are quiet, well behaved and conscientious and get above average marks it is very easy-when in actual fact you need a good metaphorical kick.........
There is also the problem that occurs at school -and children are quick to see it as unfair-the well behaved DC who can be relied upon to sit still and listen is just expected to do it and yet they watch the DC who is a pain in the neck get praise and rewards just because they manage to do it for once!

It, as I said earlier, opens a whole can of worms-unless you have 2 DCs of similar aptitude, intelligence and personality.

Don't get me wrong, we tell the DDs we're proud of them all the time, and we might have a celebration dinner or buy them something to celebrate a particularly great result/report/hard work/effort. But for me personally, I can't stomach what many parents seem to do which is say "if you get 90% in your tap exam you can have £20, but if you only get 80% (or even 89%) you'll only get £10". Different parenting styles I guess, but I can see that backfiring and sending out the wrong message.

As KellyElly may have correctly supposed, I don't work in sales .

They are 6 and 4 no deep analyses necessary.
Just well done your teacher says you've worked hard and behaved well at school. Hug and cinema trip if you can afford it.

Honestly there is no great point in getting hung up about, rewards and the difference between effort and achievement. By next year DC1 will read their own report and draw their own conclusions. By 9 or 10 they could write their own.

DCs aren't daft, they know what they are good at, they know if they have tried and they know if their reports are accurate. No amount of praising effort over achievement will change that. DCs are fiercely competitive and they are competitive in real concrete what book band or you on, which spelling group, marks out of ten, position in the class terms.

By all means boost their self confidence by funding extra curricular stuff they have a talent for. Genuine praise for singing is worth it's weight in gold to DD1. But don't think for one second you can pretend their weaknesses don't exist.

When our eldest DS (severely dyslexic and on the A spectrum, not expected to do well) was doing his A levels, he came home and announced that "all" (quite a few) of his friends were getting cash rewards for results, some were ridiculous amounts, and he felt he should get the same treatment,

I agreed that I would give him a hundred pounds for each exam failed, I explained that he would need all the money he could get, if he wasn't able to open the doors that success from passing the exams would achieve.

The house rule is if you fail an exam, you get a hundred pounds, I've not had to pay out yet.

I believe and try to drum into my children, they are doing the study, training and work for their own benefit, theirs alone, the harder they work now, the easier life will be later, the best incentive, is installing a personal dive in them, they can push themselves far harder than any one else can,

Nurture the self drive in them, and you will end up worrying they are overdoing it rather than making them dig their heels in.

If you push, they push back, stop pushing.

Enabling is a far better use of energy.

Eldest got highest marks possible in all of his exams,

Adolescents get overwhelmed by the enormity of their targets in life, tell them to forget about the big picture, just keep doing all the tiny steps, next time they look up, the target will be a lot closer.