ODD Children: Why Parents Find Rewards Don't Work

However, the way parents are taught to give rewards generally has three basic problems.

First of all, it does not really relate to your child's world. Your child's world is not a world of receiving rewards for compliance. Children just have to listen sometimes whether they get rewards or not.

For example, when your child goes to school, he's expected to behave. Not behaving is not an option. The teacher's not expected to cut a special deal with each child in her class to get each child to behave. Your child's world does not operate that way. Your world also doesn't operate that way. When was the last time you received a note from the IRS saying thank you for not cheating on your taxes? So, the first problem with rewards is that it doesn't reflect the real world the child's going to grow into and going to live in.

Here's the second problem. Your child's not a rat. The idea of rewards and punishment to modify behavior was developed in laboratory animals. But your child is not a laboratory animal.

For example, rats don't hate their brothers, they're not jealous. They don't hold a grudge. Children have all these problems. Sometimes you just can't buy better behavior when other emotional things are going on. There just aren't rewards that are big enough.

A third problem is your child's going to catch on. Children are smart, and they understand that you are paying for behavior with rewards. Eventually going to figure out they can hold out for more and get bigger and bigger rewards. What happens then is the size of the reward escalates.

So if your child's a toddler or a 3 year old, you might be able to get him not to ride his bike or go on the street by giving him a sticker. When he's 10 or 11, it might require a video game to get him to ride with his helmet on. But how do you get your defiant teenager not to drive drunk? What are you going to buy him; a new Mustang?

Rewards become harder to use. They become more expensive and you need more and more of them just to get the same behavior. It's not a good long-term plan.

There is a proper ways to use rewards. We will discuss in a different article how to use rewards properly to motivate difficult children.