Children's Incentives

Motivating children to do something that they do not seem to be very interested in is one of the very difficult tasks adults face when it comes to child management (in school, orphanages, juvenile delinquency centers, or other places). Because of this, most adults resort to motivating the children with the use of incentives – usually in the form of something they enjoy, like sports-related items, video games, and even sometimes non-tangible things like extending sleeping hours on weekends or being able to stay up late on Fridays.

Incentives for children are primarily designed as motivators. These “giveaways in exchange for something else” are used to make children proactive and to develop initiative and the instinct to do things, and do them right, during the crucial formative years.

Giving incentives to children to reward a positive action or attribute is considered by many to be a sound, positive reinforcement that can inspire children to continue doing the right things, which they do because doing good things results in rewards. There are different types of incentives given to children for different reasons.

Some sociologists and psychologists, however, oppose the use of incentive generally because this may create an attitude among children, and that they would spend the rest of their lives in need of external motivators to get them going and to make them do the things they should be doing in the first place. Specialists even argue that while the intentions of incentives are genuinely good, giving incentives in exchange for doing something may lead children to think that negative attitudes such as bribery and extortion can be justified as good, since these activities follow the same pattern that they as children were programmed to follow.

Specialists also posed questions on incentive givers: what happens to the children and their attitudes when there are no more incentives that an adult can use that are enticing enough, and when children stop caring whether they get something or not?