When Motivation Mimics Manipulation

“How do I motivate my child?” is a common question parents ask. It has become a topic of concern and conversation within the church as well.

My first experience with this concern came years ago, when back in the 90’s, my family participated in a program with a multitude of other families around the country. It was organized by a well-meaning business hoping to encourage reading and literacy among youth – a very worthy goal. It offered free personal pan pizzas for children who completed reading a certain number of books (I believe it was something like 10 books) every month. It seemed like a lovely opportunity – we got some free, yummy pizza with friends, and our children read more books. Win-win, right?

For those moms in our group however, we saw the program appear to over time actually have a back-firing result. Our children started fairly quickly to lose interest in reading, having even less interest than they did when they began the program. They started asking to “count” books which were easier and easier toward their required ten books list. “Can I count this picture book?” Previously proficient and capable readers were asking, “How about this little (pamphlet) book, can I count this one?” Where they had been reading chapter books, they began to choose the easiest, shortest, simplest books they could get away with to add to their list. They wanted the social time out and the pizza, but reading? …not so much. As moms we were having to push and prod and threaten. Previous to the program, this wasn’t the case. But now they began to view reading as the unpleasant chore and hurdle to the real reward…of pizza. After all, their parents had to bribe them to do it. Needless to say, we ended our participation, but too late in my opinion, as a fair amount of damage had been done by then. I don’t know if you have tried and experienced any similar outcomes to attempts to incentivise children, but this has been my experience, and from my research on this topic, it appears to be a fairly universal outcome to this type of “motivation” program.  

Charlotte Mason addressed this concern regularly (and how to counter it), even 100 years ago, in her volumes on educational thought and practice. “But so besotted is our educational thought that we believe children regard knowledge rather as repulsive medicine than as inviting food. Hence our dependence on marks and prizes, athletics, alluring presentation, any jam we can devise to disguise the powder.” (Mason, The Philosophy Of Education, Volume 6, p. 88-89). Mason saw the use of prizes as a “stumbling block” (p. 11) which eliminates and distracts children from the hunger of learning and curiosity which they naturally posess.

As parents, teachers, and Sunday School leaders, how then do we rightly inspire others to learn in a lasting way and encourage genuine growth and change? How do we encourage students to keep their levels of motivation toward learning high, without falling into ineffective manipulative bribes or other coercive measures?

Mason taught a different way. I believe there are things we can do to cultivate learning and raise intrinsic motivation. In the Christian home and church, these positive elements include a dependency on the Holy Spirit both in attitude and in prayer. We can also work to create a positive learning atmosphere – the best conditions for learning; an atmosphere that is respectful and valuing of the personhood of each child – one that is cheerful, caring, loving, orderly, comfortable, safe, accepting, welcoming, etc. We can also create a sense of excitement about what is coming, an anticipation for what will be learned. We can create a sense of curiosity and wonder – promoting questions, active discovery, and thoughtful engagement with the important ideas and truths shared. And we can do this through the very best in life-giving resources that we can find – resources which present the whole counsel and truths of God in the best possible and most engaging way. Knowing God is an experience of wonder, and wonder is contagious. Our own wonder and enthusiasm for a topic (in this case, God) is one of the most effective learning inspirations. We can also help students see the relevance of the ideas and topics we share, relevance to their own lives, and to the lives, character, and identities to which they aspire. In addition, we can provide opportunity, modeling, encouragement, and teaching or training in the development of habits and the spiritual disciplines of prayer, Bible reading, memorizing scripture, gathering for worship, learning, discussion, and serving etc. This is where it is especially important for our churches to be also training, equipping and supporting parents to continue these practices as habits in the home. 

I believe there are also things we cannot and/or should not do as teachers wanting to share the truths of God with children however.

We obviously then ought not provide a poor atmosphere – one which is unwelcoming, harsh, chaotic, etc. Nor should we lecture long using dull, boring materials and ideas with a lack of relevance, wonder, curiosity, or active participation, spoon feeding children’s unengaged minds. We also should not talk down to children, seeing them as inferior and unvalued, with little to contribute. God holds the souls of children in great regard, and so should we.

But we must also recognize that we cannot create heart change, only God can do that. God can call us to obedience, but He and only He can also create the intrinsic desire for holiness, where we cannot. We can say to a child, “you should” do this or that, and we can try to help students see how something might benefit them in the future. We can also try to show them how doing this activity or learning that information or practice has some benefit and relevance to their lives, but we are still limited. We cannot make children want to do anything. Buttons and sticker rewards do not accomplish this inward heart change or desire toward the external behavior. 

I have three lingering concerns with using if/then external rewards particularly when used with children for spiritual practices. First, these rewards may send the message that the inward heart change is irrelevant to the reward. Perhaps worse, extrinsic rewards may send the message to students that the topic to be learned or spiritual practice we are trying to encourage is something clearly undesirable since (as in my book-reading example) the adults around think I need to be bribed to do it. We want our children to know Christlikeness is a desirable goal, and relationship with God is the desirable reward, not the hurdle to getting some other desired reward. We want our children to clearly see Jesus, in all His beauty, love, power, and glory, and fall in love with Him. God ought not be seen as a stepping stone to the joy of trinkets, toys, buttons and stickers. I don’t think we ever want to confuse this, and find later, when we remove the rewarding incentives, our youth have actually zero interest in God Himself. 

Second, we also don’t want to confuse children with ideas of earning things from God through our spiritual practices (by giving buttons and stickers rewards). As Jonathan Worthington explains in The Gospel Coalition article titled, Deep Motivation In Theological Education, grace is not the enemy of effort, but it is the enemy of earning. I believe giving if/then rewards for spiritual practices of coming to God is confusing this message of grace and genuine faith. We can certainly gently affirm and celebrate the accomplishments of children, but I believe it is not appropriate (but rather manipulative and concerning) to offer if/then rewards to children for spiritual practices or obedience to God (as in, “if you pray or read the Bible X times this week, I will then give you a reward of money or a toy”). 

Finally, I would add that God always only wants heart-felt, sincere obedience. He may offer extrinsic rewards, but He does not offer extrinsic rewards for merely outward behavior that is not matched with heartfelt, inward desire. Nor does He ever encourage mere outward obedience. Rather, He sternly rebukes this, as when Jesus rebukes the Pharisees in Matthew 23:26. Attempting to incentivize children to practice spiritual disciplines (children who may or may not have that inward desire) is concerning, as it can lead to potentially normalizing and rewarding this hypocritical external conformity, without the accompanying sincere heart attitude God desires. God offers such things as escape from hell if you come to Jesus, but if you don’t genuinely treasure Jesus by faith, but merely want the reward of escape, you have missed the point (and the reward) entirely. God is not a means to another end. Relationship with God IS the reward.

I know this is an extremely popular cultural trend (incentivising children for desired behaviors), which has been ongoing for some time, and it is often well meaning. But it seems to me to have serious and particular concerns, especially when related to spiritual practices. And I think we as parents (and churches especially) need to examine more closely what offering these external motivators is actually producing. Are they producing inward heart change? Are they truly positively impacting our children over time? Or might they be contributing over time to a decrease in interest in the things of God, or to a false or disingenuous spirituality and entitlement attitude in the next generation of Christians?

Daniel Pink’s book, Drive, which was written for adults in secular adult work settings, reminds us that working adults must be rewarded with pay for their jobs, as pay for work is necessary for people to live. We cannot do away with all external rewards. However, I think the point was also made that pay offered for a job ought to be fair, so it then becomes less or (perhaps entirely) removed as a distraction to the performance of the job. Beyond this, even with adults, extrinsic rewards (such as the type we are often providing in our schools, homes, or church children’s programs) are only ever of minimal benefit and those only exist when used in very limited circumstances. This would be, for example, as when a task is always dull, unengaging, and monotonous, or in the case where a dull task must be completed in a time-sensitive frame and under unusual circumstances – like when the company printer breaks and now there is a need to collate pages for tomorrow’s seminar. In this case, a short incentive might speed participating workers to finish the job more quickly, but it is not a lasting solution to long-term motivation. Those workers don’t grow more in love with collating because you just rewarded them to do it.

From what I have read and researched on this, using these if/then reward methods in other circumstances were actually always harmful to inspiring intrinsic desire toward the desired activity or goal. If this is true, it is concerning if we are attempting to mimic this method of manipulation with children for the purpose of prodding them to follow God. The book Punished By Rewards, by Alfie Kohn, covers this topic of incentivising children much more extensively, but is also a secular book. As mentioned earlier, The Gospel Coalition offers a related article which I highly recommend. The article speaks to this topic of motivation from a Christian educational perspective. The article is again titled, Deep Motivation in Theological Education, by Jonathan D. Worthington. Worthington explains that we can’t really externally “motivate” another person to want to do something. I do believe we can encourage children to develop their own motivation using the tools I listed in the beginning of this post, (providing a positive atmosphere, life-giving resources, etc.) but if we try to help students to be motivated with the wrong type of motivation, we may actually be harming our student’s in their walk with God, and in their path of growing in that Christ-like transformation we so earnestly desire.

For the love of God,

Anne

Blog Archive - Original Post February 2023