Stop bribing your kid - the science is pretty shocking

15 hours ago
6 min read

Updated: 7 hours ago

"If you use the potty, I'll give you a lolly"

Ahh, the temptation to say that is so real....

Especially if you find yourself three months straight without a single dry night since saying goodbye to the nappies. It can drive any parent absolutely crazy.

At some point you find yourself wondering if they will ever master the art of using the toilet. How long shall we give them? 18 years???

And you would think that by rewarding a certain behaviour, you would get more of it. Right? Unfortunately, there is a danger, in paying your child to execute tasks - and I'm talking about any task: from using the toilet, to taking out the trash, to tidying away toys, to getting dressed.

And trust me when I say:

The short-term pay-off is not worth the long-term consequences.

It all boils down to motivation.

Daniel Pink writes extensively about this in his bestselling book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

His conclusion, backed by decades of behavioural science research:

it is not money or rewards that drive us to do our best work.

It is autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Here's the mechanism at play:

by offering a reward, you signal to the child that the task is undesirable.

If it were desirable, you wouldn't need to prod.

But that initial signal - and the reward that comes with it - sets the parent on a path that is very difficult to leave.

Offer too small a reward and the child won't comply. Offer something enticing enough to work the first time, and you are doomed to repeat it forever.

There is no going back.

Pay your child to do their homework and you are essentially guaranteed they will never do it freely again. Worse, once the initial reward buzz tapers off, you'll likely need to increase the payment to maintain compliance. I've heard from parents of older children of practices like: "If you do your homework, I'll give you 50 CHF" — or an Apple Watch. And the stakes keep climbing.

The science backs this up.

Psychologists call it the Overjustification Effect — the phenomenon where offering an external reward for an activity that someone already finds intrinsically interesting actually reduces their motivation to do it.

The landmark study was conducted in 1973 by Mark Lepper, David Greene, and Richard Nisbett at Stanford University.

They observed nursery school children who loved drawing. Some children were promised a reward for drawing; others were not. When the reward was removed, the children who had been rewarded showed significantly less interest in drawing than before - while the unrewarded children remained as engaged as ever. What had started as joyful and self-motivated became transactional and hollow.

This finding has been replicated in dozens of studies since.

A 1999 meta-analysis by Edward Deci, Richard Koestner, and Richard Ryan, published in Psychological Bulletin, analysed 128 experiments and confirmed that tangible, expected rewards consistently undermine intrinsic motivation. As Deci put it: "The more you reward people for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward."

Even Maria Montessori understood this - over a century ago. She observed that children are natural strivers, with an intrinsic drive to explore, master, and make sense of the world around them.

She deliberately removed external rewards from her classrooms, trusting that the work itself - when meaningful and appropriately challenging - would be its own reward. She was right.

Humans have an internal need to achieve mastery. That drive is extraordinarily powerful - until we accidentally extinguish it by attaching a sticker chart to it.

Stop taking the fun away

This is my big plea to you: ditch the reward charts.

Put away the treasure chests full of goodies for every time your child brushes their teeth.

In today's world - where we are one click away from online shopping, where dopamine pings arrive with every notification, "like", "heart" & message - it is genuinely hard not to become addicted to validation.

We are already swimming upstream against a world engineered to make us crave instant gratification. Why add to that current at home?

The big question is this:

Do we want to raise a generation that seeks instant rewards and back-patting at every turn?

Or children who know their own worth, and do something because it is meaningful, challenging, and genuinely good for them?

So — what can we do instead?

First, a deep breath. Because the alternative is not more work, more creativity, or more Pinterest-worthy parenting. The alternative is actually simpler — it’s about returning the task to your child, rather than plastering it with adult expectations.

The research gives us a very clear direction: if rewards undermine intrinsic motivation, then the antidote is to protect intrinsic motivation at all costs. And the way we do that — in real family life, with real children, and real mess — is surprisingly practical.

1. Let natural consequences do the teaching

Not punishments (like giving them "time out").

Not guilt trips.

Just the simple, logical outcome of an action.

If toys aren’t tidied, some of them might need to “rest” on a shelf until tomorrow.

If the child chooses not to use the potty before leaving the house, we bring spare clothes and let them experience the inconvenience of changing on a park bench (we have done this SO MANY TIMES and are hopeful that there is light at the end of the tunnel...).

Children learn faster - and more respectfully - from reality than from a bribe.

2. Use connection before direction

A child’s brain literally cannot cooperate when they feel disconnected.

Getting down to their eye level, saying their name softly, or placing a gentle hand on their shoulder activates the social engagement system. Only then does the instruction land.

No sticker chart has ever been more motivating than feeling understood.

3. Offer choices — real ones

Autonomy is fuel. It turns a reluctant toddler into an empowered one.

“Do you want to walk to the potty or hop like a bunny?”

“Shall we tidy the blocks first or the books?”

“Red socks or blue socks?”

The task stays the same. The power dynamic shifts - and cooperation increases.

4. Make it playful (because play is the language of children)

Not performative play. Not “let’s make every chore magical.”

Just a sprinkling of lightness will do the job.

“Can you brush your teeth until the song ends?”

“Let’s see who can carry the laundry like a strong giant.”

“Can you tiptoe to the potty without waking the dragon?”

This is not a workaround. It is developmental truth: children learn through play. Adults learn through pressure. They are not the same.

5. Narrate and acknowledge effort — not results

This is the heart of intrinsic motivation.

Not: “Good job!”

But: “You noticed your body and went straight to the toilet.”

“You worked hard to clean that up.”

“You kept trying even when it was frustrating.”

Effort-based feedback builds identity. Reward-based feedback builds dependency.

6. Adjust your expectations — and trust their timeline

Potty learning is not linear. Neither is getting dressed independently. Or putting toys away. Or brushing teeth. Or emotional regulation - especially emotional regulation.

Your child is not giving you a hard time; they are having a hard time. And skills learned from a place of readiness last far longer than skills learned from a place of bribery.

7. Remember: mastery feels good

Children don’t need stickers to feel proud. They need experiences that let them feel capable.

In one study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, toddlers showed higher emotional satisfaction after completing a task independently than after receiving praise for completing the same task with help. Their internal reward system fired harder when the achievement was truly theirs.

Maria Montessori observed the same phenomenon a century earlier: the child who spills water 20 times and then — finally — pours it without spilling beams with an internal glow no sticker could ever match.

If there is one thing I would love for you to remember:

Your child already has the motivational system they need. They already want to learn, master, do, become.

When we remove rewards, we are not taking something away. We are giving something back: their natural drive.

In a world where everything around us is engineered for instant gratification - notifications, shopping apps, dopamine on demand - home can become the place where they learn patience, perseverance, competence, and confidence.

So next time you hear yourself about to say, “If you use the potty, I’ll give you a lolly,” stop.

And remember:

The person you are raising is far bigger than the task in front of you.

They don’t need a reward to grow.

Just time, connection, and trust.

PS. Andrew Huberman talks about the study here:

Here's to raising smarter, more confident & resilient children - and more often than not, it starts with us.