How do parents encourage their children to act from the heart?

A few days ago, a friend came to me for help, saying that her child’s academic performance was not very good before, so she thought of many ways to motivate her: if he scored 80 points in the exam, he would take him to a big meal; if he ranked in the top 20, he would be rewarded. Toys; if you rank in the top 10, you will be rewarded with a trip to Disneyland. Parents have worked hard, but their children\’s grades have not improved. At the beginning, the effect of this reward system on children was very obvious. But after a few times, the child began to become impatient, and his grades fell instead of rising. This time he did a mess in the exam, which made his friend very distressed. Rewards are indeed a \”simple and crude\” educational method with quick results. It represents parents\’ affirmation and encouragement of their children\’s positive behaviors. But if parents try to use rewards to lure their children to make progress every time, it will be difficult to help their children really get rid of their problems. As time goes by, the children will use rewards to \”blackmail\” their parents. Teacher Yin Jianli once said: \”Proposing rewards as a bait for learning is a bribery method for adults to ask children to reward themselves with results.\” Even in a short period of time, material rewards can Stimulating children to make some changes is also temporary and will not last long. On the contrary, it is very detrimental to the child\’s cognition and character building. Teacher Yin said that no matter how good her daughter’s test scores are, she will not give any material rewards. On the contrary, if you fail in the test, you will not criticize, but analyze with your children the reasons why they failed in the test this time. She wants children to view learning as something pure and something they are willing to perform by themselves, rather than being connected to some trivial \”rewards\”. Why do the more you reward, the more lazy your children become? There is a famous \”Lepa experiment\” in psychology, which is worthy of our deep thought. Psychologist Dr. Lepa selected some children who love to draw and divided them into two groups. He said to the children in the first group: \”If you draw well, you can get rewards from the teacher.\” To the children in the second group, he said: \”The teacher likes to watch you draw and hopes you can draw better works.\” \”The children all happily picked up their paintbrushes and started creating. The first group received corresponding rewards, and the second group received Lepa\’s analysis and comments. After three weeks, Lepa found that the first group of children\’s interest in drawing was significantly reduced, and many were unwilling to even try to create anymore. The children in the second group were still interested and loved painting as before. Later, Dr. Lepa demonstrated this experiment many times in different countries and regions, and the results were similar. In education, people\’s motivations for doing things are divided into internal motivation and external motivation. Internal motivation is a person’s confidence and enthusiasm to do something well from the heart, reflecting our self-efficacy, curiosity and drive to do something well; children realize the importance of learning from the heart , the willingness to do things well is internal motivation, and it is also the state of perfection we pursue. External motivation is the motivation to do things caused by external stimuli. It often requires encouragement, encouragement, and rewards to maintain it. Remember that classic story? An old man couldn\’t bear the naughty kid kicking cans under his window every day, so he came up with an idea.The solution is to tell the children that if they kick cans for a day, they will be rewarded with ten yuan. It was pie in the sky, and the children were so happy that they played extra hard every day. Three days later, the old man told them: \”Sorry, the pension has not been paid out yet. I\’m sorry I can only give you five yuan.\” The children were very unhappy and gradually became less diligent. A few days later, the old man pretended to be worried: \”I\’m sorry, my income has shrunk. Now I can only give you one yuan a day.\” \”One yuan?\” A child shouted: \”One yuan only wants us to Working so hard for you every day? I won’t do it anymore!” From then on, the naughty boy never appeared in front of the old man’s house again. Similarly, if parents use rewards to guide their children for a long time, over time, the children will regard rewards as goals, and regard the responsibilities and obligations of studying and doing housework, which should be their own, as the purpose of achieving rewards. The means adopted thus hinder the development of good behavioral habits. What\’s more, excessive rewards will make children\’s desire for material things infinitely expand. An educator said: \”Behaviors inspired by rewards must be sustained by escalating rewards.\” If parents use rewards as the only means to motivate their children, the children\’s appetite will also increase and they will become more utilitarian. Even irreconcilable family conflicts broke out. How to reward children in the most scientific way? It is certainly not advisable to blindly use rewards to \”lazy\” and urge children to make progress, but we do not have to \”kill them all\”. Rewards are a double-edged sword. If used well, they will naturally have positive effects: 1. Don’t promise rewards when your children make mistakes. It’s cold now and my daughter stays in bed and doesn’t want to go to school. When I get anxious, I say, you If you get up immediately, your mother will buy you McDonald\’s today. When your daughter hears this, she will get up with a squeak. Later, the more I thought about it, the more I felt that what I was doing was not appropriate, so I called her over in the evening and said, \”Both you and your mother made mistakes today. It was wrong for you not to want to go to school. In order to get you to get up quickly, my mother promised to buy it for you.\” Delicious food, this is not right. Because you may think in the future that you will go to school well only if you have delicious food to eat, is that true?\” Xiao Hao lowered his head and said, \”I\’m sorry, Mom, I shouldn\’t be like this today.\” I added: \”Because what you did today is wrong, today\’s McDonald\’s cannot be regarded as a reward. As a punishment, my mother will deduct the money from today\’s McDonald\’s from your pocket money next month. At the same time, my mother will also Punish yourself by not watching your favorite TV programs for a week, can you supervise your mother?\” Unexpectedly, my daughter really agreed, and she expressed her determination to me: Mom, I will never be like this again! 2. Spiritual rewards are better than material rewards. In fact, compared to specific material rewards, sometimes spiritual rewards can motivate children more. Primary school teachers in some countries in Europe and the United States will adopt many rich ways of spiritual rewards, such as: having lunch with the people they like; – enjoying the right of independent choice; teachers making praise calls to parents of students; – sharing progress and achievements with parents Stand at the front of the queue happily; – Enjoy the honor gained from personal effortsGlory reduces the amount of homework; – enjoys the special privilege of personal effort to choose lunch music, let students bring tapes or CDs from home; – enjoy the joy of independent choice, take the class tape recorder home for one night; – enjoy Privileges obtained due to personal efforts appreciate this kind of reward method, which more reflects the child\’s sense of responsibility, glory and achievement. 10 must-see movies for children. 10 excellent movie recommendations that will help children grow. Compared with toys that are hot for three minutes and snacks that are gone after one stomach, if you can give your children some special spiritual rewards, they will be more impressed. There is also more trust and dependence on parents. 3. Instead of encouraging the results, it is better to encourage the process. Of course, if your child does well in exams, buying him a long-awaited toy or taking him to eat a big meal that he usually has no chance to eat are all affirmations and recognition of the child. We often say: You will be rewarded with whatever score you get in the final exam, but we rarely tell children how to achieve this goal specifically? If a child works hard but fails to achieve the set goal, will he become discouraged if he is not given some encouragement? Therefore, we might as well reward the process of children\’s efforts rather than the results, so that we can more effectively stimulate children\’s learning motivation and make the role of rewards truly effective. For example, we agreed with our child that if he gets into the top ten, he will be rewarded with a set of \”Harry Potter\” that he has dreamed of. However, when the results come out, the child only gets 15th. At this time, do we still need a reward? Instead of scolding the child and canceling the reward, it is better to do a summary review with the child. If the child really tried his best and prepared for the exam seriously, he should also affirm the child\’s review results during this period. The reward can be halved to soothe the child\’s frustrated heart and allow him to feel the gentle company and encouragement from his parents. Finally, when we formulate the reward plan, we can also involve the children, which can more fully stimulate the children\’s fighting spirit and interest, and also promote the harmonious parent-child relationship. There is no shortcut to raising children. If you are lazy at the beginning, you will have to pay back twice as much later. Rewards are not a one-and-done parenting strategy. Raising children requires us to put in more efforts and \”prescribe the right medicine\” according to the child\’s personality and conduct. Only in this way can we help the child grow better.