We’re rewarding our kids for the wrong things

🏆 Participation trophies are one of my biggest pet peeves.

They show kids they can log a “win” without logging any effort, time, or practice.

That’s why we should only reward kids when they do hard things – win or lose.

📈 When we reward kids for challenging themselves, they develop a growth mindset.

Every time I look at my marathon medals, I remember how many hours I had to train just to be able to finish the 42.2 km.

But if I’d been given an award as soon as I signed up for the marathon, I wouldn’t feel pride looking at those medals.

It would’ve felt cheap.

Rewarding kids for doing the bare minimum doesn't boost their confidence, it creates sore losers.

And it certainly doesn’t help them improve and grow.

So in today’s newsletter, I’ll be covering exactly what behaviors parents do need to reward kids for, and how to raise resilient, growth-oriented kids. ⚡

Until now.

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Rewarded behavior = your kid’s new habits

“Success is not a goal to reach or a finish line to cross. It is a system to improve, an endless process to refine”

—James Clear, Author of Atomic Habits

With all of us, kids included, the first step to creating optimal systems is developing good habits.

This means you can help your kid develop good habits by rewarding them for good behaviors.

Let’s break it down: 👇

First, recognize that rewards don’t have to be material.

It just has to be something they care about. You can dish out:

• Praise

• TV privileges

• An extra book at bedtime

Second, make sure kids have some control over the reward they’ve earned.

Do this by rewarding behaviors over outcomes. For instance:

📖 If the outcome you’re seeking is good grades, reward them when they study.

🧹 If you want their room to be clean, reward them when they put their toys away.

🍽️ If you think they should be helping out around the house, reward them when they set the table for dinner without asking.

Behaviors feel actionable. So when kids are rewarded for behaviors, they feel in control of the reward.

These are the rewards that will be most effective at changing habits.

If your kids hate losing, they need more practice with it

I’ll admit, participation trophies can soothe hurt feelings after a loss.

But in the long run, they set kids up to be unable to handle disappointment. And it robs kids of a valuable gift that losing provides:

A reason to improve. 📈

Help your kids remember that their most important competition is themselves.

If they do better than they did last time, that’s a win.

Even kids who throw tantrums every time they lose at Candyland can learn to adopt this mindset. Losing with grace is a muscle that can strengthen with practice. 💪

You can help kids practice losing with:

• Competitive sports

• Board games

• Video games

The key is not to let kids win, have a do-over, or fudge the rules.

Let them lose. Otherwise, they’ll never learn how to cope with losing.

While they practice, you should also be helping them learn a fundamental skill in tandem: 👇

Resilience: the key to raising unstoppable kids

What does it mean to be resilient?

• Knowing you can get better over time

• Seeing mistakes as opportunities to improve

• Bouncing back after failure

Without resilience, kids will get stuck at every challenge.

When I was a competitive figure skater, my coach and I always followed up mistakes with a discussion on how to not make the same mistake again.

This is why elite athletes spend hours strategizing for the next game and looking at their opponents’ winning plays.

🧠 And it’s why we emphasize that win or lose, there’s always something to learn.

So next time your kid fumbles, help them re-focus.

💬 Ask them:

• What are you going to do next?

• How are you going to learn from this?

• What can you do better next time?

What matters is not whether your kids make a mistake. 

What matters is what they do next.

Last week, we asked you if you’d let your kids use AI to help them with schoolwork.

67% of you said yes, with 43% adding the caveat that your kids would need some additional supervision, guidance, or rules.

Help your kids navigate AI responsibly by enrolling in our AI Masterclass.

For this week’s question, we want to know:

Until next time,

Ivy

CEO Prequel, BETA Camp, Apollo

Follow my journey on LinkedIn