Rewarding Children For Getting Good Grades: Advantages And Disadvantages

Many parents tend to reward children for getting good grades with gifts or prizes. However, these types of attitudes can have a negative effect on the child. Here you will find the advantages and disadvantages of giving a gift to children if they get good grades.

Rewarding children for getting good grades can have a negative effect on them. Parents often resort to a reward system to ensure that children get good grades, but is it okay to incentivize kids with rewards to get good grades?

It is very important that you praise, praise, applaud and congratulate your child when he gets good grades in school, but never buy him with gifts. The only responsibility your child has as a student is to study, so recognize his merits and support him in his failures, but avoid that the end goal is a gift or a prize.

In addition, you have to bear in mind that, if your child brings good grades, it is worth celebrating with his favorite food, preparing a cake to share with the family and eating it to his health or going to the cinema to see a movie that he likes.

Reward children for getting good grades? Advantages and disadvantages

Remember that material things are not the only way, or the best, to reward your child’s effort. Teach them to work, which in the long run will make them happier than getting everything they want without trying.

Advantages of rewarding children for getting good grades

1. Reinforce the positive. Rewarding your child for a good effort or recognizing him with an ice cream or one more hour of video games will always be a positive thing. Try to further reinforce their positive incentives, although you don’t necessarily have to do it with rewards.
2. Immediate results. Behavior can be conditioned quickly and effectively, with both negative and positive reinforcement. From an early age your child usually responds with actions to these types of methods. The essential thing is that this does not become the only way to direct your behavior or to motivate you, because it will slowly diminish its effect.
3. Discipline. You have to know that rewarding or punishing behavior is a good alternative to maintain discipline and good behavior. If you want to shape your child’s behavior, this can work perfectly, but what happens when there are no punishments or rewards?

 Disadvantages of rewarding children for getting good grades 

1. Override the conviction. The discipline you achieve in your child is based solely on rewards or prohibitions, in this way children do not understand the true value of being disciplined, but they do it only to respond to your conditions, to win a prize or not be punished, and not out of conviction.
2. Results by interest. This can happen with grades in school, where your child puts rewards over true learning. Maybe you don’t want to be a punishment or you want to have a new toy, and to achieve this you resort to copying a practical work or an exam, memorizing without learning to pass and cheat.
3. Little focus on objectives. If your child acts out of positive or negative reward, lose sight of the true goal. They may become more focused on the result of a test than on what they are doing and learning.
   

Arguments for and against rewarding children for getting good grades

The arguments in favor of rewarding children for getting good grades are:

• If you give him a gift, your child will learn that effort and perseverance pay off. This is a treat for your good work and it will help motivate you.
• In case you give him something for his good grades, you have to assess whether it is convenient for them to be material objects; perhaps you prefer a greeting, a hug, a kiss or some attention. This will fill you with satisfaction. Your child will be very happy that you recognize his work and effort.
• There is nothing wrong with rewarding your child’s effort, but the ideal is that he does not expect it, in this way he will understand it as the result of his work and not as something that he should always receive. Thus, you will be aware of your own perseverance and dedication.

• You can also use the gift as an incentive when your child begins to lose his way, as long as it does not contribute to his indiscipline. Try to take it as a goal, as a motivation. It is best to carry out a daily reinforcement without rewards of material value.

The arguments against rewarding children for getting good grades are:

• Your child has to understand that studying is his responsibility and that getting good grades is very important to have a good future. Don’t let him get used to always getting a reward for his achievements.
• Gifts can be counterproductive when your child comes to think that more than having the obligation to study, it is you who should give him a gift at the end of the course. This will make them demand more and better gifts.

• The reward cannot be used as an end in itself. Your child may interpret that he has to study to receive something in return. You run the risk of being perceived as something inherent at the end of each term or course. It will no longer be effective if you wait for the gift even when you get poor grades.
• If you promise him a present for approving everything, it can also be detrimental if he does not get it, as it will increase his feeling of failure.
• It is more effective if you dedicate time and affection to it. Keep in mind that the most valuable thing that you can leave your child are the values ​​and a basis for his future adult life. The economic and the material are only momentary.
  

You have to be aware that your child, on some occasions, may deserve an award for getting good grades or a reprimand in case the opposite happens. The important thing is that rewarding him is not the only alternative to motivate him to obtain good grades, since his own conviction to do things well for himself may be invalidated.