Reward ideas that aren't money or screen time

17 August 2026 · Sly Gittens

Both of the obvious rewards have the same problem: they're easy to give, and they quietly become the reason your child does anything at all.

There's nothing wrong with either. Money teaches something real, and screen time is a normal part of a modern childhood. The trouble is that both are frictionless, so they become the default — and a child who only tidies up for a price learns that tidying up is worth exactly its price and no more.

What follows is what we've used instead, sorted by roughly how much they cost you.

Free, and better than they sound

• 🍦 Treat day — an ice cream, on a specific day, decided together
• 🎮 Family game night — screens off, the child picks the game
• 🍳 You choose dinner, and help cook it
• 🌙 Half an hour later to bed, on a Friday
• 🎧 You pick the music in the car for a week
• 🧺 A job swap — you do theirs, they do yours

The pattern in all of these: the reward is time and attention, or a small piece of control over something normally decided by an adult. Children value both far more than the price would suggest.

Small money, big occasion

• 🎳 Bowling, or the climbing wall
• 🧩 A new game the family votes on
• 🍿 A film at home with everything that implies — the good popcorn, the blanket, the lot
• 🚂 A day trip somewhere they choose from a shortlist

Note the voting. A reward the whole family shares does something an individual prize doesn't: it makes a sibling's good week your good week too, which is the opposite of what most sticker systems accidentally build.

The big one, at the top

Have something at the far end that takes months. A real day out, a trip, the thing they'd genuinely choose if asked.

It matters less that it's ever reached than that it's visible. A ladder with a top rung tells a child that the small stuff adds up to something, which is the actual lesson — and it's the reason a ladder beats a stream of small prizes handed out on the day.

Make it a ladder, not a shop

The structure matters as much as the contents.

A shop — where points are spent and disappear — turns every good day into a transaction and encourages hoarding, haggling and the question "what do I get". A ladder, where the total keeps rising and rewards unlock as you pass them, keeps the focus on the climb.

Points that only ever go up are also kinder. Nobody has to watch a bad week take something away from them.

Two things to avoid

Don't reward what's already happening. If your child brushes their teeth without being asked, putting it on the ladder can make them stop doing it for its own sake. Save the ladder for things that genuinely need the scaffolding.

Don't take rewards away as punishment. The moment progress can be confiscated, the whole thing becomes a stick, and a child who is already having a hard week gets a second penalty for it. If a consequence is needed, let it be a separate conversation.

The short version

• Time and attention beat money and screens, and cost less.
• Let them choose something normally chosen by an adult.
• Share the ladder so a sibling's win is everyone's win.
• Put something big at the top, even if it's months away.
• A ladder, not a shop — points go up, never down.