Offering rewards can actually take away from this beautiful natural motivation by making a child want to do something for you rather than for himself.
For example, say Johnny naturally enjoys raking leaves. It's a great chance to be outside and use his big muscles and accomplish a useful task, which feels good. But maybe one day you ask him and he says "no" because he's busy building with blocks. You have company coming over and you really want the leaves raked, so you offer him a reward, maybe candy or extra screen time, for doing it.The leaves get raked and Johnny is happy because he got an extra 30 minutes on the iPad.Everyone wins, right?
But what about next time? Your child may no longer want to rake leaves for the joy of it. Now he expects a reward. He is now extrinsically motivated.
This is not only a small annoyance—now you have to stockpile candy or rake the leaves yourself—it is a fundamental change in how a child sees work.
Intrinsically motivated children work hard because they enjoy a challenge, they want to learn how to do new things, and they enjoy the sense of satisfaction that comes from contributing to the community.
Extrinsically motivated children do things for others'
praise or to get a prize. This mindset can follow a child into adulthood, so it is important to support their natural intrinsic motivation while they're young.
It turns out rewards don't work for adult behavior either, as habit and human nature expert Gretchen Rubin writes about
here. For both children and adults, rewards only work in the short term.
Rewards diminish an activity's value
Telling your child that you'll give him something to complete a task implies that the task is somehow unpleasant or not inherently valuable.
For example, "You can pick out a toy from the toy store if you turn in your homework every day for a month" implies that the homework is not worth doing for its own sake.
Interesting studies have been conducted around this effect in schools. In her book
Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius, Angeline Lillard discusses the science of motivation. She seeks scientific data comparing the traditional schools' reward-based grading system with Montessori schools, which emphasize intrinsic motivation and often do not give grades.
Among others, Lillard cites
Mark Lepper's study of 3-5 year olds which tracked how offering rewards impacted their interest in coloring with markers. One group of children was offered a reward (a fancy gold star plaque) for coloring and the other group was offered nothing. The reward group was found to use the markers only half as much as the group that was not rewarded a few weeks later.
Offering a reward implies that an activity is unpleasant or not inherently valuable on its own, hence the need for the reward.
Rewards ignore the underlying issue
Offering a reward for a desired behavior ignores the underlying reason that a child is refusing. For example, a parent might think, "My child refuses to read, I'll give him a sticker for each book he reads."
This type of system fails to ask
why the child doesn't like to read. Maybe he doesn't have any books that interest him and he would love a book about dinosaurs. Maybe the books he's being asked to read are too challenging (or not challenging enough!). Maybe he would enjoy reading more if you were sitting next to him reading too or he would enjoy being read to.
If your child is refusing to do something, there is generally a reason why, and offering a reward can prevent you from discovering what that reason is.