Inspiration Not Intimidation: How to Unlock the Benefits of Incentives
Incentives can be a really powerful study tool, but how do you make sure that as a parent you are using them appropriately and effectively?
With exams right around the corner for so many teens in the Northern Hemisphere, I am thinking about ways parents can help their teens in meaningful ways that aren’t doing the exams for them.
Heck, you might not have studied maths since you were 15! But that doesn’t mean you can’t help your teen with their studying.
I try to write about the practical side of studying as much as possible, like how to write an essay, how to make study notes etc, but today I am discussing a more oblique topic because it is something that could fundamentally change the way you and your teen think about studying and what ‘success’ looks like.
How to use incentives the right way.
Here we go.
What not to do
Let’s set the scene a little.
You are a parent. You have a teenager who is struggling to get the grades they are capable of, either because they aren’t motivated or don’t know how to study, or even more likely — because of both.
You desperately want them to get better grades; grades that reflect what they are actually capable of; grades that are going to give them more options for a brighter future.
But how do you get them there?
How do you motivate a teenager who isn’t motivated? How do you get a teenager who has no clue what they want to do when they leave school to care about exams?
How do you get a teenager who doesn’t think about the long term to understand that short-term pain can result in massive long-term gain?
Well first, here’s what you don’t do.
If your teen is struggling academically at high school, basing incentives on grades is probably not going to effect any kind of significant behavioural change.
At the moment, basing incentives on the goal of straight A’s is probably unrealistic, and also, unhelpful.
But if basing incentives on grades isn’t likely to help motivate your teen, what do you do?
What would success actually look like?
Let’s forget about grades for a second.
If your teen is struggling, focusing on getting particular grades is going to be at best not helpful, and at worst, counterproductive.
How is your teen supposed to be motivated to study if getting straight C’s let alone straight A’s feels like an insurmountable challenge? If they don’t know what’s required to get those grades?
So if not grades, what would success actually look like?
Success would be if your teen starts putting in some effort with their studying, if they start figuring out what study techniques work for them, and if they start to make progress towards getting the grades they are actually capable of.
Surely if your teen started doing these things you would be thrilled to bits, regardless of what grades they ended up getting?
It’s all about control
Far be it for me to pretend that I am a psychologist or behavioural scientist, but when it comes to studying at least, incentives work far better when they are based on something that your teen can control.
Your teen cannot control the grades they get.
They can do things that will make it more likely they will get better grades (ie study), but they do not have control of the grade they are assigned.
If someone told me that I had to run a marathon in six weeks’ time, not even a child-free week in the Maldives as an incentive would get me across the finish line.
But if someone offered me that same incentive (let me dream okay?) if I ran a little bit each day for six weeks, I would strap on my running shoes with the enthusiasm of a child on Christmas morning.
The hugeness of running a marathon is too daunting to be motivating, and I cannot control with certainty whether or not I would be able to run a marathon, even if I did train for it. But going for regular runs of realistic distances is something mentally manageable and within my direct control.
When it comes to your teen, grades are an intangible goal, and they are something that may or may not eventuate.
Grades depend on a lot of factors — how much study you do, what exam questions you are asked, how you perform on exam-day, how the examiner marks your exam.
What your teen can control is the amount of effort they put in.
They can control when and how often they go and sit down at their desk.
They can control how many practice essays they write.
They can control how many practice questions they attempt.
They can control how many past exams they try to get through.
And when you are offered an enticing incentive based on realistic actions that you can directly control, you are much more likely to do what is required to make sure you get that incentive.
Next steps
If you can sit down with your teen and come up with some incentives based on the effort they put in, this will be much more likely to yield action on their part, and better results as a consequence.
For example, you might give your teen some incentives for doing X number of hours of study per week.
Back to my fantasy of a child-free week in the Maldives for a second. If I did run a little bit every day for six weeks, well, I probably (definitely) wouldn’t be ready to run a marathon, but I would be a lot fitter. I would have made enormous progress.
This is what we want for your teen too. Progress. Not straight A’s, but progress.
So let’s start deploying incentives that reward effort rather than results, and not only should this help your teen to start implementing better study habits, it will deliver results in the process by default.
Have you used incentives to try to help motivate your teen before? Have they worked? Let’s talk it out in the comments. We can all learn so much from collective wisdom.
Wishing your teen all the very best with their studying, especially if they are about to sit exams.
Clare