Monetary Incentive for Children & Teens

Over the years, I’ve had a number of parents express concern that giving their children allowance or money for grades would essentially be paying them off or bribing them to do what they should be doing in the first place. They essentially feel that their children should be doing chores and earning good grades because “it’s the right thing to do” and that they should be internally motivated to do the right thing. Ultimately, that is the goal. However, most of us don’t begin life with such internal motivation. Most of us tend to start off as externally motivated and only become more internally motivated overtime as we get older and have received external rewards from those around us. While I do think that being internally motivated for something is a more mature and ideal way to be, in many ways, this is quite often not how the world works.

Take for example a parent going to work. That parent may love their job and get a lot of satisfaction out of it, but I don’t know how many parents would keep their jobs if they didn’t get paid for it. In other words, if they didn’t receive their external motivation to keep working, would they keep showing up for work?

Needless to say, I don’t believe that giving your children an allowance or a reward for grades is a bribe or sending the wrong message. I actually think it’s a great way to teach children real world lessons about the nature of consequence, reward, and the development of a good work ethic. If handing out $25 a report card results in your child getting straight A’s, perhaps it’s worth it and is actually a small amount to invest in their future. What you’re also likely to discover overtime is that the external reward will matter less to your child in that they will eventually be motivated to feel proud of themselves for having received good grades. This is a sure sign that the external reward has been internalized and they are now more self-motivated to get good grades.

So here are my general guidelines for offering a monetary reward for chores and good grades:

In terms of chores, I think there should be two different types of chores. One set of chores are the chores that you should do simply because you’re living in a community and everybody needs to pitch in to make sure it’s functioning. If these chores aren’t done, then there should be some sort of consequence that a parent could apply.

The second set of chores are those chores that they get paid for which are designed teach the value and satisfaction of hard work, how to earn money, and hopefully how to budget money. The thing with paid chores though is this: if children choose not to do the paid chores than the consequence is no pay. Parents will often want to apply some other consequence such as a restriction or on top of that. I always discourage this because that’s not the spirit or intention of a paid chore.

Now as for school grades, if a child is needing a little bit more motivation to raise their grades, I don’t feel it’s problematic to offer some sort of monetary reward when it’s report card time. However, assigning a dollar amount to grades obviously depends on your economic situation and the age of your child. The one thing that I do absolutely discourage though is deducting money from an already earned reward if your child has some low grades. This tends to be fairly self-defeating for the child and will likely sabotage any gains.

So in the end, paying out an allowance or rewards for grades shouldn’t be seen as paying off your children or sending them the wrong message. While we do want our children to develop internal motivation, they also need to learn how to live in the world that is heavily tied to external motivation.

If you'd like support for your child or teen, schedule an appointment with Dr. Sina today.