Are you rewarding your child enough? 

Are you rewarding your child enough?

Approaching a reward triggers dopamine. Dopamine alerts your attention to things that meet your needs. How you define your needs depends on your unique life experience. Each time dopamine flowed in your youth, it connected neurons in your brain. Now you’re wired you to meet your needs in ways that felt good in your past.

Dopamine creates the switched-on, pumped-up state. Dopamine is good for pleasure and motivation: it’s the party animal of the neurochemical world. Dopamine helps people change moods. It approaches adult levels somewhere between six and nine years, and then lowers during the teenage years. This explains why teenagers can be harder to motivate than younger children. There are clear signs that bright kids are down on dopamine.

Dopamine creates the switched-on, pumped-up state. Dopamine is good for pleasure and motivation: it’s the party animal of the neurochemical world. Dopamine helps people change moods. It approaches adult levels somewhere between six and nine years, and then lowers during the teenage years. This explains why teenagers can be harder to motivate than younger children. There are clear signs that bright kids are down on dopamine.

• Sports that involve repetitive movements such as table tennis, swimming, handball, and training
• Solving challenges and problems – asking your children to help you out by working out a solution to some family issue
• Social interaction – even the fairly reclusive Passive Resisters will benefit from an increase in dopamine when they get to mix socially
• Rewards – inducements, bribery, call it what you will, it works!

Likely signs of low levels of dopamine

• Has difficulty getting focused
• Is unmotivated
• Is not proud of accomplishments
• Is lethargic and tired
• Is uninterested and won’t try things out
• Finds it unsettling or difficult to shift from one activity to another

Dopamine motivates you to seek, whether your child is seeking a scoring well in a test or playing well on sports day. Dopamine motivates persistence in the pursuit of things that meet your needs. You can stimulate the good feeling of dopamine without behaviours that hurt your best interests. Teach your child to embrace a new goal and take small steps toward it every day. Their brain will reward them with dopamine each time they take a step. The repetition will build a new dopamine pathway until it’s big enough to become a good habit. Keep rewarding your child every step of the way and you will see the good change come about in them.