Perhaps you've heard this joke before:

A group of boys had made a habit of running through a neighborhood and banging on trash cans. The noise disturbed a man who lived in the neighborhood, so he approached the boys with an offer:

"I'll pay you $5 an hour to bang on those trash cans," he said.
"Alright!" The boys agreed, and happily collected their first payment.

"I can't afford to pay the $5 an hour today, so I'll give you $2. Can you still do it?"
"Um… Sure" the boys mumbled.

"I'm sorry, but today I can only afford to pay you 50 cents. How about it?"
"No way!" the boys chanted in unison. "We can't bang on trash cans for only 50 cents!"

It's a clever story, but the lesson behind it is important: people often don't want to do the things that they think they have to do. For the boys in the story, the perception that what they were doing was work, for the man's benefit and not their own, undermined their joy in banging on the trash cans. In the end, the boys stopped doing something that they previously enjoyed.

Parenting And Rewards

This story is good to keep in mind when considering your own child's motivations. Often, parents offer rewards to their children in exchange for some kind of performance: "If you read three books this summer, I'll take you out for a special ice cream." To some extent, such rewards are built into the classroom as well: "When we finish our series of quizzes, we'll have a party."

The thinking goes like this: rewards are necessary to get children to complete the tasks that are good for them. It's better than nothing. And maybe they'll learn to like the task once the hurdle of starting it has been cleared.

The problem with such an approach is that it sends the message that a job alone isn't worth doing unless there's something extra to be gained. In this way, the child learns to focus on the reward rather than the task itself. The child's behavior begins to arise from extrinsic motivation -- that is, doing something for an outside agent rather than one's own self. The goal should be to have an intrinsically motivated child, who does things for the pleasure of doing them. Consider what would happen if a child's rewards were to disappear? If that child completed a task only for the rewards that followed, the behavior is unlikely to be sustained.

The Rewards of Enjoyment

This idea has been demonstrated with research. Mark Lepper, a social psychologist at Stanford University, undertook a study more than twenty years ago in which he introduced colouring markers into a preschool classroom. Children who were found to naturally enjoy the markers became the participants in the study. Some were told that if they played well with the markers, they would receive a Good Player Award. The others were told nothing. You can guess what happened. The kids who were playing for the award used the markers less than the kids who were left to themselves and continued their play as before.

As a parent, the last thing you want to do is to reward a child for a task he or she already enjoys -- it's clearly unnecessary if your child voluntarily engages in the task. But what do you do when the task is something that's not enjoyable, like taking out the trash? You want the child to focus on the task and not the reward. However, you may have to point out the benefits of the task for the child, i.e., that the trash doesn't smell anymore.

Praise and Recognition

Rewarding your child by offering positive verbal feedback is also a fine idea: "Thanks for taking out the trash. I appreciate that," or "I noticed that you followed directions really well during practice today." Also, if you feel like your children deserve special recognition, it's okay to reward them after they've completed a task, as a surprise. This might be best suited for a one-time task or one that was done particularly well, lest the child expect that future behaviors will be similarly rewarded. This is not to say that the occasional trip to the ice cream shop isn't a great experience for your child. It just shouldn't be connected with the completion of tasks.

Encourage your children to focus their attention on the task itself, and help them to appreciate that "hard" or even "boring" doesn't necessarily mean "bad" or "not worth doing." Make your child feel like someone who thrives on a task, not someone who withstands it. You'll find that your children's positive behaviors will continue, and they might get excited about some neat activities (like developing a love for reading) along the way.