What (free) incentives do your kids like?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We were going to institute a weekly family movie night as an incentive for good behavior. One child is thrilled. The other said that he is trying to reduce his screen time already. (About 30-45 minutes a day at home + whatever they get at school.) I want to encourage that impulse. Kids are kindergarten and second grade boys. Both parents have plenty of time on the weekends to implement *something*. Any suggestions? I know this sounds improbable, but my kid is weird.

An elementary school kid was offered a movie and said this? Talk about enlightened.

[Anonymous]

Family game night letting them pick out what to eat for dinner. Going out to thier favorite restaurant .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP. I’m a longtime former teacher and now a principal. I help teachers across a wide range of age develop incentive/behavior plans. They can be very powerful, and they can fail quickly.

First, what exactly are you trying to accomplish? Is there a specific behavior you’re trying to eliminate, ie whining, leaving toys out.

Or are you trying to get them to follow a routine at bedtime or wake-up?

You posted that you were trying to incentivize “good behavior.” That’s way too fuzzy and will end in failure. What exactly is “good behavior?” The more clarity you have about the behavior and the less subjectivity needed to determine if happened, the better.

-Focus on the 1-3 behaviors you want to see or eliminate. I like to set up the chart in yes/no prompts. Either you did it or you didn’t. Example:
My toys were put away by 8pm with only one reminder. yes or no
I used kind, caring words when talking to my brother today. Yes or no.
-Get buy-in from kids by offering choice on what the reward is.
-Make sure the reward is not too far away. If I’m 6 and have to wait a week for my reward, it might not work for me. Perhaps a small sticker is earned for each “yes” action daily, and an accumulated 10 stickers earns a prize. This allows for mistakes to happen and doesn’t blow it for the week.
-As someone else noted, what happens if one kid meets the expectation and the other doesn’t?
-And finally, I really appreciate what another poster noted about family movie not being a reward but just something you all should be doing together. You should be having a regularly scheduled family fun dinner or movie night or game night.

Good luck.

I'm another teacher and I agree with this.

Rewards should be for very specific behaviors, not for "good behavior".

Rewards that you lose, like a movie night that you don't get if you don't get all your stars by Thursday, or tokens that are won and lost, almost never work. Instead you want a reward that either happens as soon as you earn it (e.g. when you get 5 stars you get to . . . ) or where things grow (e.g. each time you . . . you can earn a 5 extra minutes. On Friday, you can stay up that many minutes late.

Rewards shouldn't be attention from you. Kids who are struggling need more, not less, attention. Control or choice is a great elementary school reward. I once told my kids that whoever came first when I called them for dinner got the privilege of choosing where everyone sat at the table, as demonstrated by putting "their" plate and utensils there (yes, I bribed my kids to come to dinner on time with the privilege of being allowed to set the table, and it worked on my youngest. My oldest, who didn't have trouble coming on time and didn't want to set the table, showed up a minute late every time). Choosing something for their lunch box can be another great cost free thing, since you are already buying things for their lunch box.

Rewards that kids can work for together can work for kids, if the problem is in the interaction. So, work together to earn 10 stars for both doing your HW? That doesn't work. We'll make popsicles for dessert if younger brother doesn't whine, when he's reacting to big brother teasing? Works great because it incentivizes younger brother not to overreact/tattle and older brother not to tease.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The idea of them having to earn quality time with me bugs me. I'd get toys and call it a day.

Agree. My kids are 10/12 and we have always done all this stuff - not as a reward but as. Normal way of life. We try not to bribe them or punish/ban them from things and it seems to be fine. The more quality family time we have the better behaved they are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Think through how this is going to work with two kids. If one has a hard week, are you going to exclude him from family game night/fancy dinner/whatever? "Sorry Timmy, you can't play with us because you misbehaved on Wednesday" would not be received well by most people. Or will you tell the kid who was successful, sorry we can't play a game because Timmy misbehaved yesterday?

Whoever had the best behavior gets to go first?

That might be ok if each kid has the "best" behavior roughly half the time, but if one child has more difficulty and never goes first, the message they are getting is, I'll never be as good as my sibling, so I might as well stop trying.

When my kids were OP's child's age, we tried a marble jar, where they earned marbles when they did something good and then earned a prize when the jar was full. One of my kids consistently filled his jar faster and more easily than my other kid, which led to more meltdowns and dysregulation, which was exactly what I was trying to avoid. We later switched to Ross Greene's collaborative problem solving, which doesn't rely on incentives, and it works much better.

Lower the bar for the more challenging kid?

As the less challenging kid, I can say I resented this.

+10000000000000000000000000000

[Anonymous]

We have rewards for kindness but not good behavior. My behavior challenged kid never struggles with basic kindness and it surprised me when we started keeping track how much he earned. I was so focused on the bad behavior I didn't see the good that was there. Our rewards are extra screen time, extra allowance, a new board game, a new book, going out for ice cream (everyone).

[Anonymous]

Trip to library

Not free but cheap: go have a pastry at a coffee shop before or after school

Extra playground time, especially post dinner

Also not free but cheap: thrift store trips and they get 10 to buy whatever they want

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Trip to the bookstore! Encourages a love for reading. If funds are low, try used bookstores in the neighborhood.

Or the library...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trip to the bookstore! Encourages a love for reading. If funds are low, try used bookstores in the neighborhood.

Or the library...

Why would a trip to the library need to be earned?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have rewards for kindness but not good behavior. My behavior challenged kid never struggles with basic kindness and it surprised me when we started keeping track how much he earned. I was so focused on the bad behavior I didn't see the good that was there. Our rewards are extra screen time, extra allowance, a new board game, a new book, going out for ice cream (everyone).

If he has a sibling, that’s extremely unfair to the good one.

Regardless, it’s your obligation to focus on his bad behavior.

[Anonymous]

Special outing on the weekend, like ice skating, movie, Park District activity.

I couch it not as “You get to spend time with me if you’re good,” but rather if I have energy to do so (based on kid behavior), we will go. Either way we spend time together. But an ice skating trip is more of a treat than playing a board game at home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have rewards for kindness but not good behavior. My behavior challenged kid never struggles with basic kindness and it surprised me when we started keeping track how much he earned. I was so focused on the bad behavior I didn't see the good that was there. Our rewards are extra screen time, extra allowance, a new board game, a new book, going out for ice cream (everyone).

If he has a sibling, that’s extremely unfair to the good one.

Regardless, it’s your obligation to focus on his bad behavior.

How is it unfair to the other sibling that they both are equally recognized for being kind? Of course we have consequences for bad behavior but we don't use a reward system for that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The idea of them having to earn quality time with me bugs me. I'd get toys and call it a day.

I agree with this. Institute a family movie/board game night to spend time with your kids. Then do something different to incentivize good behavior.

+1. I'm not at all judgy about bribing kids to behave or what bribes are used... But something feels wrong to me about a kid having to earn playing a board game with their family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trip to the bookstore! Encourages a love for reading. If funds are low, try used bookstores in the neighborhood.

Or the library...

Why would a trip to the library need to be earned?

OP set an almost impossible task. She has asked for rewards that are (1) not food, (2) free, and (3) not screen time. People are trying to meet that and it's genuinely hard.

If your kid is extra book-motivated, and extra trip to the library beyond your usual visit could work though. Or agreeing to go for a special event they enjoy but you don't, like a lego club or D&D club.

Our kid sometimes earns book downloads to her kindle with good behavior. I don't know if other people consider that screentime. We do require our kid to read most books in physical print and generally save the kindle for travel. So it's a special treat to her to get to download a book to the kindle and read it at home. There's an instant gratification element there too. Download might be from the library or could be from Amazon -- usually we check the library first if she's looking for a specific title and if it's not available we will pay for it as long as it's not too expensive (most kids books are pretty cheap on kindle).

[Anonymous]

Just a thought. Maybe the family time is not the incentive, but things around that - choosing a healthy snack, choosing the movie, deciding whether it's a streaming movie at home or a DVD from the library.