I’ve been trying to teach my kids the importance of helping others, and I want to encourage this behavior. Does anyone have suggestions for effective rewards that won’t make it seem like they’re only doing it for the prize? I’m looking for ideas that will reinforce the positive feelings of being kind and helpful. Thanks for any tips!
We don’t do specific rewards. My kids seem to like when I notice and mention their helpful actions later.
Sometimes I’ll say how their kindness made someone’s day better. It’s simple but works for us.
We’ve found that talking about helpful actions works well in our family. At dinner, we share stories of kindness we saw or did during the day. The kids really enjoy this and it’s become a nice routine for us.
Something else that’s been great is involving the kids in choosing a charity to support. They get excited about collecting coins or helping at events for causes they care about.
We also have a bulletin board where we pin notes about kind things family members did. The kids love seeing their notes up there and it reminds them to keep being helpful.
These little things seem to work better for us than formal rewards. The kids are starting to help others more naturally now without expecting anything in return.
In our house, we’ve found that making helping others part of our family culture works well. My kid loves when we volunteer together at the local animal shelter. It’s become a fun weekend activity we both look forward to.
We also started a ‘kindness jar’ where we drop in notes about helpful things we’ve seen each other do. Reading them together at the end of the month is always a heartwarming experience. It’s not really about rewards, but more about celebrating kindness as a family value.
I’ve gone through this with my kids. At first, I tried giving them treats or extra TV time for being helpful, but it didn’t feel right. They started expecting rewards for everything.
What worked better was pointing out how their actions made others feel. Like when my son helped an elderly neighbor with groceries, I mentioned how grateful she looked. It seemed to stick with him more than any reward would have.
We also started sharing stories at dinner about kind things we saw or did that day. It became a nice family tradition and got the kids thinking about helpfulness more often. Sometimes we’d do something fun together as a family to celebrate a week of kindness, but it wasn’t a direct reward. It was more about enjoying time together and talking about why being kind matters. 
Recently I’ve been thinking about this too. My 5-year-old sometimes helps others, but I worry about overdoing rewards.
I tried a sticker chart for kind acts, but it felt forced. Now we talk about how helping made them feel at bedtime. They seem to like sharing those moments.
What about older kids? Do you find they need different motivations as they grow? I’m curious how others handle this as children get older.