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Showing posts from September 10, 2016

New Study Says Rewards are a Detriment

Detriment: That word seems harsh when talking about “rewards” for children. Aren’t rewards supposed to be great? Maybe not! A recent study has found that 3 year olds who were rewarded with an extrinsic material were less likely to continue kind behavior and more likely to increase in bad behavior. Yes, that sounds bizarre, but that is exactly what the study found. You can read it here . Material rewards have recently concerned me. I’ve seen the disappointing effects when years later, the 6 th grader (who has received material rewards for years), scores a 100 on his test and says, “Wow, a 100! What do I get?” For a long time, we haven’t been aware of how to fix this, even though we’ve known that we don’t want to raise generation of children who do the right thing, solely based on “what they were going to get” for it. For a while now, this whole issue has left me uncomfortable in my spirit. Another very common discipline strategy that has worried me is the concept o