- What about rewarding kids? And here, rather than start off by asking, you know, what are the best ways to reward kids in healthy ways? I will ask that in a moment. How can we evaluate the notion of rewards or incentives through this lens of sturdiness, boundaries, and empathy?

- Yeah. Because, you know, I could imagine, you know, a reward that's outsized in comparison to what a kid did. You know, okay, great, you know, you took your plate to the kitchen sink after dinner. You know, you get $10,000, obviously out of scale, extreme example, but just by way of example.

You know, screw up their reward mechanisms for life, if you ask me, everything I know about reward and neuroplasticity says that that would occur. But this idea that, you know, you can incentivize kids. If you turn off the TV now, then you definitely can watch tomorrow night. Whereas if you don't, you can't.

So you're sort of merging reward and potential punishment. You know, how do we bound rewards? And how do we take into account that when we start adding rewards to scenarios that we're mixing and matching life experience for them? You know, okay, so now doing what I'm told, do I always expect a reward?

If the reward doesn't come next time, we know based on reward prediction error, we tend to be worse off emotionally than had we never received a reward in the first place. Again, pretty vast parameter space, but what are your thoughts on best ways to reward kids for standard good behavior versus achievement, versus elimination of bad behavior?

- Yeah. - Maybe. So three categories. - I think you're asking a much bigger question, or I'm gonna, I think you are, which is like, why do parents think we need to reward kids? I think that's, why do we think we need to punish kids? And this is actually where everything I work on started from because the way I was trained to work with parents, I went to, you know, the best gold standard evidence-based program.

And it was all about timeouts and punishments and rewards and stickers and ignoring and praise. And honestly, during the training, for the years after I kind of practiced this way, I feel like that, you know this better than I am, so I shouldn't even say this, but like that left part of my brain, like logic and linearity.

I was just like, this is amazing. Oh my goodness, we're gonna get more of the good behavior and we're gonna not get the bad behavior. And I'd start teaching this to parents in my private practice and there was this little thing in me, I don't even know, I was like, I don't know about this.

I don't know. And it got louder and louder to the point that in a session, I literally said to a parent in front of me, I was just like telling them how to do a timeout. I said, I'm sorry, I don't believe anything I've been telling you. That's literally what I said.

'Cause I just, it was so loud and it was obviously super awkward, but it led me to, I feel like from this first principles way be like, there are a million assumptions that we have about raising kids and I think about relationships. And if I just strip them back, what do I be left with?

And what would it be a new building from there? And rewards and like punishments to me are these assumptions that we have somehow converted from like the fiction shelf of the library in my mind to like the nonfiction shelf as like truths. And I kind of rail against all of them.

So I think the question, if that's okay to go in that direction to me is like, why do we think we need to reward kids? And is there actually a better system, both short-term and long-term? I'm incredibly long-term greedy in my parenting approach. 'Cause at the end of the day, 18 and up is where things really matter.

Not really matter, I mean, they all matter, but I'd rather, I wanna help my kids become sturdy, resilient adults. But I'm short-term greedy too 'cause I'm a realist. Like I just can't deal with like all of these difficult moments. You get both for sure without rewards and punishments. So I don't know, what might someone tell me they give a reward for?

Do you wanna use the like clearing the table or example? Let's start that there. It kind of goes back to like believing kids are inherently good inside. I really think it goes back to that. If you really believe kids are inherently good inside, which by the way, when I strip back every assumption, the only thing I was left was that.

Literally the only thing. And then I started to think, okay, so if they're good inside, why do they do so many annoying things like all the time? But that gave me a gap. And I feel like that is very exciting to have a gap. Like why do people who are good inside do such bad things, right?

Adults or kids. And to me, right, kids are born with all the feelings and none of the skills to manage those feelings. Like period. And we've often thought, therefore, when feelings, feelings without skills come out in behaviors. I think that's what bad behaviors are. Feelings or urges or something without a skill to manage them or without access to the skill, maybe in that moment, either way.

And then we end up punishing behavior, but the behavior was just a sign of the lack of skill. So I can't imagine anyone thinking I could teach my kid to swim by punishing them for not swimming. Like, I think someone would say that was crazy. And, but that's kind of how we raise kids.

And then we think rewarding them is gonna be effective, but it actually leads over and over to what you said. I've seen these parents over and over my private practice. My 14 year old literally won't pick up their clothes from the floor unless I give them $5. Like, how did I get here?

And I'm like, yeah, that's a problem, but I saw how they got there. So let's take clearing, you know, their plate. Like, I know this is gonna sound cheesy, but kids do have something in them where they wanna feel like a purposeful, meaningful part of society. They do. Impact drives adults and it drives kids.

It's not the same type of rewarding as playing Fortnite. It's a totally different system. But I think the question is like, why do we think we have to bribe kids or, you know, kind of trick them into doing things that are kind of like basic parts of human life?

And so if we take that, and my kid chronically isn't clearing their plate, I could say to them, look, every time you clear a plate, I'm gonna give you a sticker. After five stickers, you're gonna get, I don't know, whatever it is. To me, like a much more just effective way is I'd say to my kid, hey, I know you know, like clearing a plate is just one way of being part of this family and taking care of stuff.

I know you know that, we're on the same team. I say that phrase, we're on the same team, right? We are. Something's getting in your way of remembering. I'm gonna assume, I like the most generous interpretation. That to me allows you to separate someone's bad behavior from their good identity.

Then I'm gonna say, what would help you remember? We literally did this with my son who always had his towel on the floor. And I was just like, I bet he just doesn't remember. He literally doesn't see it. And we talked about it and he's like, we talked about him putting a Post-it, literally, something simple like a Post-it on my door that just says, pick up my towel.

He wrote it in his own handwriting, right? Trying to facilitate him like solving his own problems. And now he has a much higher rate of picking up his towel. Like, I guess I could have said, every time you pick up your towel, you'll, I don't know, get a dollar or whatever it is.

But again, it makes me think, I'm not building the generalizable skill that way. I'm just kind of offering something at the end, which sets me on this kind of awful cycle that I think kind of misses the point. I love the idea that kids want purpose. - And am I correct in wondering if that goes back to this, am I real component of the, am I real, am I safe?

- Yes. - Like one way that we know we are real is our ability to impart change on the world around us. I don't want to get too abstract here, but as a neuroscientist, I've often sat back and reflected like all the emotions we feel, like no one sees that or knows that.

Unless we say something, we write something, we sing something, we shout something, all the forms of expression, just like none of our dreams, our creative insights or wishes exist except inside us, unless we transmute them into something in the real world. So there does seem to be something about having this nervous system from a time we're really young, like it's seeing our effect on the world that really makes us real and on others.

And I love the idea that, well, and I must say, I absolutely believe in my heart and I just feel it as a feeling that kids are inherently good inside. Like, I just, I can't imagine any other version of that, but does that mean that there are people out there who believe that kids are inherently bad or at least not good?

I mean, like, how could that be? But then again, maybe I'm just naive. - I don't know if anyone consciously believes that, but when I go back to that system I was first trained in, rewards and punishments, like it feels like a system of behavioral control. And to me, like I've always thought about control and trust as opposites.

So I only control what I don't trust. So nobody said to me in that program, by the way, Becky, everything you're learning here, we believe kids are bad inside. And so we do this thing, but well, if I don't trust my kid and if I don't trust they inherently have the things in them to do good, by the way, that's not gonna happen naturally.

That's why we have a big job as a parent to coach our kids, to bring that out, to set boundaries when they can't do it and so many other things. But I don't believe anyone would say, yeah, it's 'cause they're bad inside. But there is a nature where you're constantly interacting with your kid from that other system, looking at them like, I don't trust you.

I don't trust you. And when you do bad things, I cannot hold on to the fact that you have a good identity. That's why I'm giving you a punishment. That's why I'm sending you away to your room. And so if I'm reflecting back to you constantly, that you are just your latest behavior, that I don't trust you, that I kind of have to bribe you to do very basic human things.

Well, our kids form their identity from our reflection of them. And so then this is what really compelled all of this. I'm like, we're raising generation after generation of kid, kind of saying to them, like, you're kind of a bad, untrustworthy kid. And then we wonder why we have such high rates of like massive mental health problems.

Well, like, there's some linearity there. - Thank you for tuning into the Huberman Lab Clips channel. If you enjoyed the clip that you just viewed, please check out the full length episode by clicking here.