Parenting for a Peaceful World (Robin Grille)

Can rewards and praise harm our relationship with our

children?
You wouldn't think that the positive things you say to your child
can be as destructive as negative labels. But there are times
when this is true.
Thanks to modern advances in behavioural science, our ability
to seduce or manipulate children (and animals! And grownups!) to do what we want them to has become increasingly
sophisticated. But the cost of manipulating through rewards
has been great.
Below are 10 ways praise and rewards can damage our
relationship with our children:
1. Rewards and praise condition children to seek
approval. They end up doing things to impress, instead of
doing things for themselves. This can hold back the
development of self-motivation and makes them dependent on
outside opinion. When children get used to getting goodies for
'performing', they become pleasers, over-reliant on positive
strokes. Rewards and praise can create a kind of addictive
behaviour: children can get addicted to recognition, and thus
lose touch with the simple joy of doing what they love. So many
of us are addicted to prestige: we get depressed when
admiration fails to come. Instead of doing what we do for its
own sake, we fish for flattery or reassurance, and when the
applause dies away, we sink into despair. Giving rewards or
praise can be habit-forming. This is because the more rewards
we use, the more we have to use them to keep children
motivated. Praise cannot create a personal commitment to
'good' behaviour or performance. It only creates a commitment
to seeking praise.
2. One of the worst things we can do is to praise a
child's potential. Acclamations like 'I just know you can do it',
'You're getting better!', 'I know you've got it in you!', 'You'll get
there!' sound supportive on the surface. But these compliments

are loaded with our expectation that the child must improve in
some way. It tells the child there is a target to keep reaching for
in order to get the full 'bravo!'. Praising children's potential
does not help them to like themselves for who they already are,
and can make them feel disappointed with themselves.
Underneath the praise is the silent implication: 'you're not good
enough yet'. This seduces children to work harder to impress
us, at the expense of their own self-esteem. As Australian
psychologist Louise Porter says, If you want children to
develop a healthy self-esteem, stop praising them.
3. Rewarding children's compliance is the flip side of
punishing their disobedience. It is seduction in the place of
tyranny. Many studies show that parents who use more rewards
also use more punishment, they are more likely to be
autocratic. Praise is the sweet side of authoritarian parenting. It
reduces the relationship to one of controller and controlled.
This is why the more astute or less gullible! - children feel
something 'icky' in praise; it makes them feel like they are
being condescended. Praise is a reminder that the praiser has
power over them. It diminishes the child's sense of autonomy,
and, like a little pat on the head, it keeps them small.
4. Meanwhile, the rewarder is like an assessor, judging
what merits praise and what doesn't. This makes them
somewhat scary to the child. Praise or rewards do not make
children feel supported. It makes them feel evaluated and
judged. Although 'Good boy!' or 'Good girl!' is a positive
judgement, it is still a judgement from on high, and ultimately
it alienates the child.
5. Perceptive children can see through manipulation.
They are onto us, they think our praise is slimy, and they are
not easily outwitted by seductive tactics. In particular, when
praise is a technique we have learnt from a book or a seminar,
it is likely to come across as false and contrived. Praise and
rewards, like flattery, can reek of our efforts to control, and lose
our child's respect.
6. Children, just like adults, naturally recoil from being
controlled. We all want to grow towards self-determination.

Praise can therefore create resistance, since it impinges on a

child's developing sense of autonomy.
7. Rewards punish, because the child is denied the
reward, praise or approval unless he or she 'comes up
with the goods'. Moreover, the child who is used to being
praised begins to feel inadequate, if the praise doesn't come.
Nothing feels more defeating to a child than to miss out on a
reward that he or she had been conditioned to expect. Inside
every carrot, there is a stick.
8. When children are bribed with rewards for 'good'
behaviour, they soon learn how to manipulate us by
acting the part that is expected of them. They wise up to
what it takes to get the goodies from us: the approval, the ice
cream, whatever. They become superficially compliant, doing
what it takes to flatter or impress us, and honesty suffers. After
all, who wants to be honest or real with a person who is
evaluating them? Once relating is reduced to mutual
manipulation rather than authenticity, this sets the stage for
manipulative and dishonest relationships later in life.
Manipulation erodes the functions of mutual trust, vulnerability
and transparency, which are vital to healthy intimate
relationships.
As a result of early manipulation, we grow up trying hard to
please, or we learn to use our wiles to impress, in order to get
the goodies at the expense of being our natural selves. We
develop a phoney or false self that distorts our relationships
with others.
9. Among siblings, or in the classroom, reward systems
create competition, jealousy, envy and mistrust. Rewards
or prizes for 'good' performance are a threat to co-operation or
collaboration.
10. Praise can make children feel robbed. If we are hungry
for admiration ourselves, we can sometimes err by deriving it
through our children's triumphs. We use them to make up for
our own wounded self-esteem or pride. If we are praising them
because they have made us feel good about ourselves, they

sense this. This takes away from their good feelings about
themselves; our praise can act as rain on their picnic. Some
children refuse to produce what they are naturally good at,
because they are repulsed by their parents' gloating.