Thursday, April 29, 2010
To Live and Die (Not Literally) By the Sticker
This evening my daughter, who is four, was playing teacher. She handed me a tiny sticker from her sticker collection. "Here you go, sweetie," she said to me. "This is for good behavior." I took it from my "teacher's" fingertip and put it on the back of my hand, as most children do. At first I thought it was adorable but then, call it a full moon or something in the water it broke my heart a little. Both of my children, and indeed many of the children I work with, live and die, metaphorically speaking, by the sticker. These children are fundamentally GOOD children. Developmentally well-behaved, sweet, and likable. Really, most children are or strive to be, would you agree? Yet they fall all over themselves to get a sticker, a marble, or some other small token of good behavior-ness. All this good behavior...for a sticker? The Montessori philosophy does not believe in external rewards - all "rewards" should come from inside oneself and while this may be harder for kids to "get", I think it is achievable. Certainly a child who feels good inside knows that their actions are worth more than a sticker? Can a person be anti-sticker? What do you think? I welcome your musings.
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4 comments:
A long time ago I read a book called "punished by rewards" by Alfie Kohn. His whole thesis is that rewarding children for activities that are intrinsically fun sucks the pleasure right out of it. I heartily agree. One thing I hate is the library summer reading programs where the kids log the books they read and win certificates and prizes. Yuck!
By some strange alignment in the universe, I had just read this post immediately before yours (and the post it links to). Lots of opinions on external rewards, not many of them positive. But as a game designer (Jesse Schell is my former professor) I can see a lot of potential for value in them, I think a lot of it has to do with context and the "real" motivation behind giving out the rewards (making you a better person vs. selling something?).
My kids boycotted the summer reading program with the reward of getting a scoop of Baskin Robbins ice cream -- reading 5 books and filling out a response page for each book by the start of school in September. I used to try to get them to do until finally the olde said "Why bother? We have ice cream in the freezer". So true.
Oh my goodness, I agree with you so much, and yet, argh, we once had a sticker chart for our 3 year old. She became so obsessed with stickers (prior to the chart) and we were going through some rough patches with her behavior, so I introduced a sticker chart as part of a behavior plan. I am familiar with the Montessori approach and have read many, many parenting books. What I am arriving at is that take what works when it works and then discard when the time is right.
We no longer have a sticker chart, btw, and I go back and forth about how to encourage her love and passion for learning without extrinsic motivation.
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