My friend has had new parenting troubles recently. His child seems to be possessed recently. If he asks him to do anything, he will ask his mother back: "What reward do you give me after I did this?"
This makes my friend very upset. Is there something wrong with my education?
The bitterness of my friend reminded me of a news I have seen these days.
The girl who has been in middle school won the 30th grade in an exam (1,200 people in the whole grade). During dinner in the evening, the child announced the good news. The whole family was very happy for the child. Grandpa was even more excited to reward the money he earned from selling scraps and was not willing to spend to his granddaughter.
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Children's learning progress, the elderly are happy to encourage their children, which is normal, but Can urge children with material rewards really motivate them to their hearts? This will inevitably make a question mark.
With this news, let’s talk about the topic of rewarding to children with ~
reward blur the meaning of children’s behavior
reward, it is an effective way to discipline children. If children are too lazy to do, don’t want to do, or don’t know how to do things, just give some rewards to attract them, the children will immediately shine and do what they do!
Don’t get me wrong! Children's enthusiasm will not increase due to your reward guidance, but will gradually lose due to rewards!
There is a special phenomenon in psychology called Desi effect .
Psychologist Edward L. Desi conducted an experiment on this issue. In the experiment, two randomly assigned students were summoned and asked them to guess the same puzzle separately.
The first group is informed in advance and will receive rewards for guessing riddles; the second group is not mentioned at all, just guessing riddles. After answering the question, both groups of students have corresponding rest and waiting time, and this is the real experiment.
Researchers actually found that: 2
● The first group of students did not have any reward commitments, and they still thought about the scene when guessing riddles during rest;
● The second group of students, because they were looking forward to the reward, had long forgotten the puzzles and were waiting to win the prize.
What's going on?
There is a sentence in "Development and Educational Psychology" that gives a corresponding explanation:
When a child is performing a pleasant activity, he will feel internal rewards. If an external stimulation reward is provided at this time, it will reduce the attractiveness of this activity to the child.
Think about whether we will do this in normal times? When we see that children have initiative in something or achieve good results, we can't help but want to use rewards to motivate children to make more progress and drive them.
Children are still in the stage where they need to guide their actions . Regular reward-based education, will make children misunderstand that rewards are part of the result of doing something themselves.
Then the child will be very vague about why he wants to do something and assume a certain responsibility, forming an inertial thinking of completing = reward.
reward makes children lose their initiative
reward, in fact, it is a way to push children forward with the help of external forces. This method is effective in the short term. As the children grow up, they may have more desires and their children may have a bigger appetite.
When desire is not fully satisfied, the child has no driving force for action!
Teacher Wu Zhihong said: "When acting with internal motivation, we are our own masters. If driven by external motivation, we will be influenced by external factors and become its slaves."
A netizen once shared a story about parents' reward education for themselves.
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html When she was a child, she needed to earn rewards by taking action.
At the beginning, she might get corresponding rewards for high scores and housework. She also enjoyed it very much. Until later, her parents began to not take the initiative to reward her, and she would also ask for it...
is like a hole worn by a dripping of water. This hole of desire is getting bigger and bigger by the reward of her parents . When she grew up, she recalled her childhood parent-child transaction model and found that she had been eroded by the reward education.
The children who are pushed away are gradually on the road to growth and lose their autonomy and self-drive. They have no direction, only step-by-step rewards are waiting for them to earn. Educational methods like
will only cultivate children who are empty in their hearts, have no self-worth expression, life goals, and have lost their sense of satisfaction.
can reward , but you must use
See this, you may ask, when children perform well, how can they do to encourage and praise children? Can you still give your child a reward?
Reward is a way to motivate children, but we have always emphasized that we should not use rewards to push children away in everything. It is understandable to give children appropriate rewards, but remember to use the right method.
01 jointly formulate a reward plan
Child psychologist Virginia M. Hiller once had this suggestion: can help children experience the benefits of good behavior by formulating reward plans. The concept of
is very practical and feasible to integrate into our daily rewards to our children.
We can motivate children to do something well, The premise is that this thing is the goal of the child himself or something that is interested in , rather than letting the child do what his parents want to do through rewards.
The two are very different.
In practice, you can work with your children to develop a reward plan . is mainly about children, listen to your children's ideas and opinions more, and guide your children to formulate rewards for the positive goals they want to do for a period of time.
This reward can be a big meal, something that children are looking forward to, etc. We can try our best to guide the nature of the reward. is a thing that makes children feel satisfied and happy, and use less material and toys.
Since the reward plan has been formulated, the child should try his best to achieve small goals through his own efforts. After parents agree to the child, they should do what they say, but don’t regret it and cheat.
Only by letting children enjoy it and make progress slowly can rewards have motivational meaning.
02 Spiritual reward syllogism
Family education Expert Wang Hong also has a suggestion for rewards, which is also a way to inspire children's spiritual world. It is called Encourage syllogism .
When a child does something or a certain behavior well, we can reward him through these three steps.
Step1.Hand specifically tell the child a certain performance of the child you see.
For example:
"After dinner in the evening, my mother took the initiative to send the bowl back to the kitchen and washed it."
Step2.Tell your feelings to the child.
For example:
"When you see your performance, you feel that you now know how to do your own things and can help your mother share the responsibility of washing dishes. You have made great progress!"
Step3.The concept of guiding children to implant good behaviors in their brains.
For example:
"You can already think of sending your own bowl after dinner and washing the bowls, instead of putting down the chopsticks and watching TV. How did you do it?"
When parents interact with their children with spiritual encouragement, they also deepened the children's good behavior just now in , and Strengthened the positive power brought by good behavior.
This kind of satisfaction and happiness gives children a positive psychological hint . invisibly transforms into the motivation for children to repeat such good behavior in the future , which cannot be exchanged for any material reward. The underlying logic of
reward is actually to hope that children can have self-drive !
What we need to understand is that what really makes children have self-motivation is not external forces, but the inspiration through interest and touching the heart can only be converted into internal motivation . Letting children become their own masters is the best reward result.
