“You may come to question whether teen rewards are reinforcing helpless behavior.”From the time they are little, we reward our kids for good behavior, hoping that the behavior will eventually become natural. If you have a teen with emotional problems, you may be inclined to reward him for things like getting out of bed in the morning. Over time, you might wonder if your other children, who are low-maintenance in comparison, are getting shortchanged. You may even come to question whether teen rewards are reinforcing helpless behavior.
I experienced this recently when my daughter had a bout of depression and was missing school. My husband offered her a gift card that he had been awarded (for good performance at work!) if she did not miss school for an entire week. She missed part of one class due to genuine illness. That led me to extend the offer for an additional week. But that week didn’t work out so well either. It was at that point that I began to feel like my husband and I had set a trap for ourselves.
We wanted to give her the gift card. But she really had not earned it. I don’t believe in changing rules, so I wasn’t about to start. But I came to ask myself if maybe we over-rewarded her. That is, were we subtly reinforcing her to subconsciously maintain “problems” so that they could then be solved by us?
Then a friend clued me in. She said to stop setting up rewards for good behavior. Encourage her to do what she should and when a good stretch of time has passed with her doing the right things, mention it and then take her out for lunch or give her a small gift. It will come as a surprise, but she will still know she earned it, and that, ultimately, she was doing the right thing for herself, not us.