Carrots or Sticks?

 Rewards and punishments are really just two sides of the same coin, and as Alfie Kohn says, “That coin doesn’t buy you much.”

Let’s talk first about punishments. Punishments include things like time-outs, removal of preferred items or activities, withdrawal of love, shaming, or physical punishments. The overarching message when it comes to punishments is that I can make you suffer physical and/or emotional pain based on your actions. Punishments often drive disconnection in the parent/child relationship. It puts you against your child instead of you and your child working together against a problem. Punishments can escalate situations, create anger, shame, and resentment, lead to increased sneakiness, and can erode at the heart of the relationship between you and your child.

Now let’s examine rewards. The main idea behind rewards can easily be summed up by saying “do this, and you’ll get that.” In essence, rewards are any item, event, or activity that your child would want that is given contingent upon whether or not they do or achieve a certain behavior. Rewards generally come in three different forms: tangible items (candy, toys, etc), symbolic (token economy systems, sticker charts, etc), and verbal (praise, affection, etc).

You might be thinking that rewards and punishments as I described them seem vastly different from each other. However, rewards actually do many of the same things as punishments. Rewards can lead your child to believe that you like/love them only when they behave a certain way; that is your love and approval of them is conditional. Rewards can also lead to resentment, shame, and guilt. They have been shown to diminish creativity, learning, and intrinsic motivation. Because rewards are used in a similarly coercive way as punishment (to change behavior), they are equally as corrosive to the relationship between you and your child.

Rewards and punishments are both conditional, and therefore convey a conditional love to your children. Children need to know that they are loved unconditionally regardless of what they do. A focus on rewards and punishments leads to disconnection. Whereas leading with empathy for your child and curiosity for what their behavior is communicating will help keep you connected with your child and able to guide them without compromising the parent/child attachment relationship.

So next time someone asks you if you should use rewards or punishments, tell them NEITHER!