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?

soontobe yes, my thinking.

How did you know about the Xbox! I wish the thing would break before May.

lol - Abra - replace xbox for Minecraft and PS3 and you have my house. My boys are bit younger yet but i thought Xbox a safer comment as most seem to have those. :o

In terms of getting them to work hard, we tell them it's all about choices, the harder you work at school and the better you do in exams doesn't make you a better person but it gives you more choices iin life. In the end, you may choose to do something that means you don't need academic qualifications, but if you change your mind and want to do something else then at least you hav ethe option. If you don't get any qualifications it can limit what opportunities you get - e.g. you may end up doing something just becasue you need the money rather than doing something you love that gives you enough to live on. Probably haven't phrased it very well but hope you get what I mean. That doesn't mean that I can't reward them for working hard or behaving nicely with a token gift or reward. And that goes for lots of things. i.e. choosing to speak nicely wil help you get on with people and make your life more pleasant - it can also be a good thing in an interview etc.

I do as all my 3 are well behaved,polite and are putting effort in(only excellent and good efforts) so I kind of think they do deserve a small reward,school rarely rewards them(tis often the other end of the spectrum that gets rewards at our school).

I don't buy them things other than at Christmas,bdays etc and I think they need to know their good reports are valued by us.

Don't buy anything big-1 had a Trash Pack set for £5, 1 a storage box he wanted and my dd has yet to decide(will be sound£5).Grandma gave them a £1 each.

Obviously if they had stuff bought for them all year round it would be meaningless.

There is also the problem of what you do if you are rewarding effort and you have a conscientious DC who puts maximum effort in and get top marks and then you get the maverick type who does nothing much but pulls out all the stops on the day and gets top marks ( they do exist). Do you say ' you may have got top marks but there was no effort so no reward'- for them to say 'well I still got top marks - why waste effort on it?'!

so on the offchance that those exact circumstances arise no-one should give their kids treats?

Does it have to be an all or nothing? Diligent child gets small rewards along the way for working hard - they both get a small reward at the end for doing well. unfortuanely not all people were not all created equal and that is a hard lesson for the hard workers to take but it'll stand them in good stead for life.

Haven't read all of this thread, but I can't see what's wrong with giving a child a treat for doing well and I resent the suggestion that it's somehow wrong or damaging to do so. My 7yo DD2 is a high achiever and I'm incredibly proud of her. She's dilligent and conscientious too. I fully intend to give her a treat when she gets her report inn the summer.

Disagree that young children can't understand why they have to learn to read - you explain that it's about being able to read for pleasure and when they're older to being able to fill in forms/ get a job etc. I'm not against praising good reports, or for rewarding a reluctant reader for reading out of school but if you start off giving them £5 for a y1 report then that surely inflates to £hundreds by the time they get to GCSEs - which just seems daft.

no need for it to inflate bunny - mine got a book when they were 5 - cost about a fiver - 7 years later a book is more like 7 quid but not so different. reard is the same, they know it will be the same, they still work hard they still know we are pleased, they are still happy with a book.

warning boast--

i had a min parents evening today, just to discuss ds1 IEP'S proper parents evening is next week.

in his old school all his IEP's where mainly due to "behavior"

i had had issues with his teacher and felt like she picked on him and made him the scape goat for everything, after all most a year i moved him schools

hes been there less then a year, theve all ready picked up on possible dyslexia and is in the middle of being tested. and he has NO behavior related IEP's at all. hes making massive and quick progress with reading. writing.. though he is still quite a bit behind his peers and still needs group help with this, but im so proud of him. hes like a different boy. .

im making cupcakes with him when i pick him up from dance class as an award. who doesnt like rewarding them selfs when youv worked hard or even just had a bad day.

I never got rewards for 13 years of consistently good reports and good grades etc. Everybody else did, but the most I got was well done. As a small child, it bothered me quite a bit, and when my mum did eventually offer to treat me for getting into uni I felt very uncomfortable about the whole thing and refused.

There's nothing wrong with rewarding your kids for working hard. And the one boy I knew who got paid for his exam results is now at Oxford, so...

I was never "rewarded" in that way as a child. I felt a bit like you itisimplicit. My parents were always brilliant though and I suppose I never did anything to worry them particularly. I have always been very self motivated, maybe that was part of it, maybe not.

I do reward my Dd in small ways. She hasn't always found academic things easy but her effort scores are always really high so I think it is really important to show how valulable that quality of being a hard worker and persevering is. I don't really like giving her "stuff" though. I usually say "let's go and get fish and chips to celebrate your great report".

I think a small amount of bribery, used carefully and for very specific things can be very powerful. My Dd was terrified of swimming. All her friends could swim and she refused to go to lessons. I told her she either went to lessons or came with me and worked at it. She came with me and began white with fear, clinging onto the edge. I then told her that when she could swim a width she could have her ears peirced. She swam a LENGTH within 2 weeks! It hasn't made her less self motivated at all. It was just something really lovely to think about to make it worth working hard and overcomming the fear.

Equally I have done alot of running and have often set myself goals for various distances and rewarded myself when I have reached them.

I never got rewarded either. I wonder why

I always treat ds at report time, he's always terrified he'll get a 'bad' one and puts a lot of pressure on himself, and he always thinks we'll be cross with him, which we never are. I give him extra pocket money or a small gift or trip to the cinema as a reward for all the effort he puts in.

So, in the end we have decided not to treat them. We decided that they should make the effort for the joy of making the effort rather than the prize at then end from mum and dad. We will not always be around to reward them so they need to learn to enjoy the effort for it's own sake.

We have of course told them that we have heard how much effort they have made to achieve the results that they did - stressing the effort rather than the actual achievement. They are naturally bright so at the moment the achievement is pretty easy for them but we want to foster a desire to make the effort because one day things will become challenging. The 4 yr old was praised for the numerous random acts of kindness that were mentioned by his teacher too.

We will probably do something nice at the weekend anyway - so we're not totally heartless - we just won't be tying that in with the parents evening.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts on the subject.

Another aspect is that effort is in the eye of the teacher and if you have several children in the same school it can be quite interesting to see the style of different report writers; there tends to be a bit of a pattern.

Sometimes I will know that dc are putting in minimum effort in Mr X's subject and actually trying quite hard for Mrs Y, but the mark for report is still far more positive in Mr X's subject because, bless him, he is a kindly soul who wants to see the good in everyone, whereas Mrs Y is a bit of a half glass person.

I have known the achievement mark (as measured in actual tests) rise sharply at the same time as the effort mark went down with the change of a teacher. So more about individual teachers' idea of how much effort they should have been putting in.

Exotic - I really don't see any reasons in your posts for why rewards might be harmful; it seems that they are potentially helpful and at worst unnecessary but pleasant for children (like many of the things parents do in order to give their offspring a happy childhood).

Regarding the "siblings of different abilities" scenario - as I said in my post, my parents did have two children of different levels of ability (and diligence) and used the same reward structure for both of us. If we needed something in order to progress with our studies or an interest, we'd have it; if we wanted something reasonable and had been putting in the amount of work needed to progress at school then we'd have it on the understanding that we continued to do so; if we achieved some kind of "personal best" (related to studies, music lessons etc) then we knew we would be rewarded for it. Both of us have benefited greatly from it, and I think the occasions when I got rewards and my brother didn't were actually enough to make him try harder.

As far as effort goes - if you're putting in enough effort to fulfill the expectations of your assessors, then you're putting in enough effort. How much time and focus that takes will vary from person to person in school as it does in most jobs. I think it's pretty helpful to prepare children for that reality through using rewards - why would it be harmful?

And if I might make one last comment about this thread more generally, rather than Exotic's posts: Honestly, it seems to me that some people (in and outside of this thread) will create whatever principled defense they can for staying in a comfort zone by raising their children as their parents raised them, or for avoiding spending money on their children where it can be avoided. NEITHER OF THOSE CHOICES IS AN INHERENTLY BAD THING - in fact, in some circumstances they're very sensible positions to take - but I do wish people would just acknowledge it.

All I am doing is pointing out that before you start rewarding small children for good reports you really need to think it out-it isn't always as straight forward as you think. We celebrate as a family-it isn't as if we ignore. The cinema idea is fine.

They can be harmful-depending on your family dynamics e.g. a younger DC who can't match up to an older one-or even worse a younger one who outshines an older one. Only you know this- but I think we can all know at least one teacher who has come out with 'you are nothing like your sister' to someone over their school career.

But surely the problem in your latter scenario is only an issue if you're rewarding based on results, rather than progress (i.e. for one child progress = going from a B to an A, whereas for another child progress = not falling behind/very far behind as classes get harder, or improving their behaviour/concentration etc)?

Since the celebration thing works for your family that's great for your kids; for me, it would have been a strong disincentive at times as my brother would be benefiting from my treat despite skiving off college to be with his girlfriend. I agree with you that rewards need to be appropriate to the family's circumstances, but I honestly don't think it's something to worry too much about - as you say, overtly comparing siblings unfavourably is a much bigger problem (and I do wish teachers would be more careful with it, but they clearly know that it matters very deeply to "under-performers").

There are 2 sets of rewards in place in this house, treats for consistent good attitude/effort/behaviour and a small pocket money bonus for academic achievement.

I received bonuses from my father for top grades, it was his way. He was also very much of the mindset that targets were good motivators; if you achieve X, Y will happen, was one of his favourites. As a system it worked well for me, it kept me on track when I could easily have skidded off the rails. He still has the same system in place fro my brothers, they haven't done nearly so well out of it - the bar was set at levels suitable for me and my father will not move it for them.

People's different systems just prove that we are all different (life would be boring if we were all the same). You just need to give it some thought before you start- and not accidentally start something that you don't really like, or won't work in your circumstances.

I don't really get the problem with rewarding attainment as well as front.

My Father gave me £50 per A gcse (2004) £25 per A. I actually worked after always sloping through with As but no effort, gave me push to work for s

Effort not front (bloody iPad)

Bonzoed. Good thinking. By rewarding the DC, I think you are setting them up in life to expect something for everything they do.

I think they develop a "What's in it for me mentality".

They won't be the ones who volunteer or lend a helping hand just for the sake of it.

A nice lunch or extra icecream acknowledges their effort.