What Works Better than Rewards? with Melissa Benaroya

How can parents manage their relationships with their kids in ways that reduce conflict and help children learn to be responsible? What works better than bribing or threatening? To address these questions, Senia invited Melissa Benaroya, a licensed therapist in Seattle. In addition to coaching parents, Melissa writes and speaks about tools parents can use to raise healthy children and find more joy in family life. Right now, she is offering a free 7-day Keep Calm course on the site that hosts her blog and other tools.

For the complete conversation, click here or watch the video embedded below.

Senia: What do you believe that your peers might not believe?

Melissa: Rewards actually have the opposite effect from what parents want them to accomplish. Using rewards, parents are trying to get their children to do things by manipulating them. Rewards may work in the short term, but in the long term they tend to backfire. When the rewards go away, so does the behavior. I’m sure you’re familiar with the classical conditioning of Pavlov’s dog or the Skinner box, where they trained rats with positive and negative rewards. Our children are not rats or dogs. They are human beings, and we’re trying to nurture qualities and characteristics in them.

By using rewards and bribes and even threats, we end up manipulating them, and so we don’t nurture the qualities we want in kids. We also teach the art of negotiation, which backfires, because one of the biggest complaints I hear from parents is, “My kid is always trying to negotiate with me. I can never just ask them to do something.” That’s because we taught them that skill. They were not born with it. Rewards like star charts and bribes are a crutch that we’ve all used, but really should not be a tool in our parenting toolbox.

Senia: How did you come by this belief?

Melissa: I have two children of my own. In addition to my training as a therapist in positive discipline and growth mindset, I listen to my gut. It just doesn’t feel good using these ways to get my children to do what I want them to do. It’s also frustrating that they’re not learning the importance of being responsible or taking pride, the lessons behind those things that I want for them to do.

They were probably toddlers, or preschoolers when I figured this out for myself. I knew it inherently, but people fall back on bribes. I had to try it out for myself. I learned really quickly that bribes just didn’t feel good.

Senia: What should parents do instead of rewards?

Melissa: There are many things we can do. Being intentional about having a handful of tools makes it easier to be a parent and to invite kids’ cooperation. When I work with families that use bribes as part of their daily arsenal, small tweaks can make a big difference.

One small tweak is what I call an enforceable statement. An enforceable statement focuses on what I’m willing to do or willing to allow. This is not telling the child what they need to do, because that engages us in a power struggle. We can say things like, “I’m happy to listen as soon as your voice sounds as calm and respectful as mine does,” instead of either, “I’m not going to listen to you,” or, “I’ll listen to you when you do this.” I’m not threatening or bribing. I’m focusing on what I’m willing to do and allow, and the child has a choice of what to do and can’t be frustrated with me because I said what I’m willing to do or allow.

“I’m happy to take kids to the park that have cleaned up the toys in the family room.”

If kids make the choice not to clean up the toys in the family room, then we miss that opportunity. It’s not me dangling a carrot. It’s just creating a more level playing field. At the same time, I’m not backing myself into a corner of saying and doing things that I don’t actually want to do. It shifts the balance. The child gets to make choices and learn from those choices.

We can’t physically force them to do things. Often as parents, we get into situations where we do and say things we actually can’t control, particularly around eating and sleeping. We can’t force our children to eat and sleep. There’s a handful of things associated with a child’s body we just can’t control. Parents tend to throw out empty threats, which communicate to children that they don’t mean what they say. That encourages children to push and push.

Bedtime can be difficult. I suggest making a clear agreement with children about when they’re going to bed. Have a conversation. That makes it partly their idea and invites greater cooperation. A clear agreement created together is a good starting point.

Another tool that invites kids’ cooperation is using limited choices. We establish the limits and offer some choices within the limits. This is a way to share some power and control with our child, because children are always looking for power and control. When we do, they tend to be more willing to do the things we need for them to do. Maybe the limited choice statement is, “Remember bedtime is 8:30. Do you want to brush teeth right now and have 20 minutes to read together, or take your time brushing your teeth and see how much time we have left to read books? It’s totally up to you.”

We’ve given them the choice. If we get to 8:30 and it’s taken 15 minutes to get teeth brushed, bummer, we only have five minutes to read. We hold the line. We’re focusing on what we’re willing to do and thus what the limit is. They get to learn from their own choices. They can’t get mad at us. It might not change things that night, but the next night, you bet they’re going to be more motivated to just get that teeth brushing done so they can have the time they want with their parent.

Piggy Bank of Control

The more limited choice options we can give kids throughout the day, the more cooperative they’re going to feel. Imagine every child has a piggy bank that says “control” across the front. If it’s depleted, they’re going to be looking for ways to gain control everywhere. But if that bank account is not depleted, they’re going to feel more cooperative. Be mindful of giving choices to children throughout the day.

A really important tool to avoid big power struggles and escalations is to be mindful that we need to fuel our child’s sense of power and control. This is an even bigger issue right now with the pandemic, because we all feel a loss of control around school, around seeing friends, going to favorite restaurants. What I’ve seen in my private practice is that kids are feeling very out of control. The world feels so chaotic that power struggles are on fire everywhere.

Our job is not to please kids. It’s okay that they’re disappointed or frustrated or angry.

In those moments, we just empathize. We might say, “Oh, it’s so hard when you wanted to read two chapters in your book, and we only had time for one. It’s such a bummer. Tomorrow night, we can get that teeth brushing done, and have lots of time.” Feeling frustrated and disappointed and angry builds resilience and grit. We just don’t want to get into constant head-to-head power struggles.

Senia: What do you do when kids are fighting with each other?

Melissa: It depends on the situation, but generally, it works to call out very calmly that what’s going on is not okay. Use empathy as a parenting tool. You might ask, “Uh oh, what’s going on, guys?” Just generally draw their attention to the fact that something’s not okay without putting them on the defensive. So many times, our knee-jerk response is, “You guys, quit it!” Then we’re having an emotional reaction to our children’s emotional reactions. It’s so much more helpful for us to enter the dynamic really calmly, because mirror neurons are firing off in all our brains as we replicate one each other’s emotional states, so we can help them to come back down a little bit faster if we show up calmly in the moment.

This might be an opportunity to step back and ask, “Do you guys want to figure this out on your own, or would you like me to step in and help you?” If we let it play out for a while, we could say, “You guys feel free to go play in your rooms separately for a while, or you can play something else.” Here again we can offer some limited choices in order to put an end to what’s happening right now. There’s an enforceable statement there, as well.

Really young kids sometimes need us to jump in and model some problem-solving skills. But it’s equally powerful for us to step back sometimes because our kids are more capable than we give them credit for. Sometimes when we step back and let things play out, things go badly and that’s okay. They’re learning a lesson there. We can come back and process that with them later.

I don’t think there’s one right way to deal with things. There are many dynamics that can be playing out. Trust your gut. Our intuition can be pretty powerful, and sometimes we don’t listen to it. We’re more worried about what observers might be thinking or we’re feeling guilty about something we did earlier in the day.

Senia: How would you summarize your main tools and beliefs?

Melissa: Be mindful that there’s already a power differential that exists between parent and child just because we’re bigger than they are. We’re the authority figures. When we take a more collaborative approach, we’re going to have much greater success not only inviting their cooperation, but also creating the relationship that we want to have with them for a lifetime.

When we take a more collaborative approach, we’re going to have much greater success not only inviting their cooperation, but also creating the relationship that we want to have with them for a lifetime.

Fear-based parenting does not tend to build the relationship that most parents want with their kids, but many of us grew up with parents that used fear-based parenting. Be mindful that a lot of the tools from your family of origin are going to surface, but there’s so more information and research on parenting and relationships in the last 10 years than there were in the prior 100 years. Find a philosophy, approach, and a teacher that resonates for you, and stick with it. Don’t keep browsing the internet every night looking for the answers. Find something that resonates with you and be consistent.

Senia: What’s one thought that you would like to leave with people?

Melissa: We actually need to put ourselves first. That feels counterintuitive to a lot of parents, but I see a lot of parents sacrificing their own health and well-being for the sake of their children. They’re not doing anybody a favor by doing that.

Be mindful of the small things that we can add to our days that fuel us. That will help us show up the way we want to show up, not just for our kids, but for our partner, for work, and everything. If we want to be great parents, we need to be great people first.

Senia: If you could snap your fingers and almost everybody in the world were to take some action, what would you want that action to be?

Melissa: In the moments of big emotion or a difficult behavior, I would love for parents to stop and self reflect first. Check in with themselves. “Am I escalated? What is my emotional reaction?” Then self-soothe before acting. We get so much further when we are connected to our rational brains rather than when we are responding from emotion. Just stop and take a deep breath and focus on self before focusing on kids.

Photo by Benjamin Manley on Unsplash.

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Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.