"What's My Prize?"

Kids have a desire to be rewarded for every good deed.  My children are especially talented in negotiating prizes for the things they do.  When they score well on a test, I immediately tell them I'm proud of them, and the first thing they say is, "Can I get an Ipod as a prize?"  When I say good job cleaning your room, they say can we get ice cream since we did such a good job?  When I ask them to finish the book report they are working on, they say, when we finish it can we go to Toy's R Us for a prize?  They even want a reward for hitting a home run in baseball (although, granted, I offered this prize on my own, I was so proud!)

Rewards have their benefits.  People often need external motivation to complete non-meaningful tasks.  But I think the goal should not always be the reward.  The goal is to find intrinsic value in everything we do, and eventually the task itself should be the reward.  While my children receive many prizes for jobs well done (they really are great negotiators,) they also receive many speeches about finding satisfaction in the work itself.  The reward for a good grade in math is having a good grade in math.  The reward for cleaning your room is  having a clean room.  The reward for finishing your book report is having completed your book report.  And the reward for hitting a home run is a score for your team, and the lego set you've been waiting for (hey, as I said, I was REALLY proud.)  Kids are human, and they will need some external motivation, but these should be used as a tool to reach the final goal of finding meaning in the task itself.

Being human myself, I wonder, what's my reward for being a patient mother?  What about my prize for spending my free time building a lego tower with my toddler instead of reading my book, for contemplating with my older children the pros and cons of choosing flying as your superpower instead of chatting with my friend on the phone, and for reading to my daughter a disney princess book instead of getting a manicure?  But even as I write this question, I know the answer.  My reward IS being a patient mother, building a lego tower with my toddler, discussing superpowers with my sons, and reading a princess book to my daughter.  I wouldn't trade it for any other prize in the world.