Why Smiley Faces, Sad Faces & Typical Discipline Methods Are Destructive And Make Behavior Worse #579

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2:51Get iXL now. Calm Parenting Podcast listeners get an exclusive 20 % off an IXL membership when you sign up today at IXL.com slash Kirk. Visit IXL.com slash Kirk to get the most effective learning program at the best price. Should you give your kids rewards or an allowance for good behavior or for a good report card from school? Is there a better alternative to schools using smiley faces and sad faces on behavior charts? Why is the following common statement not helpful. Oh, you're not a bad kid. You just made bad choices. Spoiler alert, I've grown to really not like that one at all and I'll explain why.

3:34You guys know this, the discipline tools that work for other kids, they just don't work for our kids. They backfire. So I want to show you a different approach so that we can go beyond. Look, we can change behavior. Good. All for that. But I really want to go beyond that. I want to give kids tools so that they can change their own responses and choices. I want to give kids tools so we can internally motivate them and in the end, stop the power struggle. So that is what we're going to discuss on today's episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. Welcome. This is Kirk Martin. You can find, if you want, our ad-free version of the podcast.

4:14And by the way, thanks for being patient with the ads. we have a separate PDA parent podcast at CelebrateColumn.com and our 50 % off spring sale, CelebrateColumn.com. So this episode stems from a really great question from a very engaged dad that I appreciate. He said, I've been considering paying my eight-year-old son, and look, this isn't just for eight-year-olds. We'll get into this for teenagers and toddlers, but I've been considering paying my child a couple bucks every time he comes home with a good report. His teachers have a system in place for him for each class. He gets a smiley face if he does well, a half smile if it was okay, and a frown face if it was not so good.

4:56He thrives with rewards, and he's been saving birthday money for a Lego set he wants. And so I've been thinking that I'll pay him every day he comes home with a good report. What are your thoughts? Well, I actually have about 10 thoughts on this. Number one, kudos to this dad for understanding that his son is motivated by positive rewards instead of the traditional response, which was usually like, well, I'm going to start taking away things, your screens, activities, if the child comes home from school with a bad report. Because that just becomes demoralizing. And it usually will actually unmotivate a child.

5:34They'll shut down. They'll give up. You know why? Because they figure out, you know what? I'm never really going to succeed. You're never going to be happy enough with me. So why even bother? So they could try for a few days and then they determine it's not even worth it. And the only thing worse is having constant talks and lectures about why you didn't get a smiley face today. Man, that is just demoralizing. So we're not going to do that. Number two, positive rewards can be a good and healthy thing for our kids. I will explain in a minute why I don't want to give rewards for a good report. but definitely affirm your kids for good choices they make and beyond good choices for effort that they make, for character attributes that they have.

6:20So I'd rather spend way more time doing that than just correcting them. Just remember that when you affirm or praise your strong will kids, you've got to keep it short and sweet and specific because they'll reject our praise. It either sounds condescending or fake or it puts too much pressure on them. Because I remember when Casey was young and he'd have like a good day at school, we'd be like, we never thought you'd actually make a good choice at school. We went a whole day without getting a call from school. Let's have a party, right? And then your kids internalize it as a demand or pressure.

6:55Uh-uh. Now you're going to expect me to do this every day, every time? Uh-uh. I'm not signing up for that. That's why with our PDA kids, I keep it very low-key and matter-of-fact. and then I give kids space. See, praise is just a statement of fact. Hey, nice job on that geometry test. I know you worked hard on that. Hey, good job not reacting when your brother said that to you. Shows me you're growing up. Even a fist bump with no words can be extremely powerful. I did this with Casey all the time and he appreciated not having to hear my voice. Number three, when kids say, I was bad today, we as parents often reply, you're not a bad kid.

7:37You just made some bad choices. Now, there's nothing really wrong with that, but I've kind of grown to actually hate that phrase. Here's why. Here's how our kids often internalize that. You say I'm a good kid, but I'm a good kid who happens to constantly make bad choices, which means I'm stupid, or inept or I can't trust myself or I'm broken and helpless because if I'm so good, why do I keep messing up so much? Why am I always in trouble? So maybe you're lying to me and I'm actually a bad kid because I keep making bad choices. See, when we don't physically show our kids how to do it differently, that leaves them feeling helpless and confused.

8:31I'll give you some old guy wisdom here. I used to be guilty of thinking, well, we all just make choices and that determines our lot in life. It's not always that black and white. Not everything is a pure rational choice that you and I make. Sometimes our decisions are driven by things we don't even understand deep down inside of us that are kind of controlling us. Not an excuse, it's just reality. Look, how many of you, how many of us have sabotaged relationships by making bad relationship choices? Most of us have at some point, but it's not like we rationally said, you know what, I'm going to choose someone that ultimately hurts me or is bad for me.

9:15It's not an excuse, but we're often driven by childhood wounds and the scars of life and tough circumstances and we end up making choices that hurt us. So always dig a little deeper with your kids. Number four, I would also rather use these times when we're talking about our kids' behavior as a problem-solving opportunity, as a teaching opportunity. Remember, discipline means to teach. Is there one part of the day that you'd like to change? What tools or help can we give the teachers so that they can help you during these situations? When Casey struggled, we discuss it matter-of-factly. Okay, so you made a choice that made a classmate or teacher feel hurt or disrespected.

10:03Do you have any idea? I'm just curious what was going on inside of you that led you to do that. Okay, so how do you want to reconcile that now. And what are you going to do differently next time? See, I take some of that shame and some of that heaviness. Well, we need to sit down and I'm going to stare you in the eyes and we're going to have this long talk about your behavior. And then what happens? Our kids, you ask like, why did you do that? I don't know. And so rather than put them on the defensive, I'm normalizing. Look, I expect you at times you're going to mess up in school, right? This one just popped into my head because mom emailed earlier about it, but it's like, oh, my child is getting in trouble at school because he's acting out in class trying to act silly.

10:49And I was like, okay, but you, and so that will be seen as being rude to the teacher, which it ultimately is, but that's not what his motivation is. This is probably a kid who doesn't get along well with kids his own age, struggles to connect. So guess what? Well, I figure out when I act silly in class, the other kids laugh. And for me as a kid, that's as close as I'm getting to being liked by other kids. So the root of it then becomes, hey, let me give you some skills so that you can learn how to connect better with kids in your class. And if you go back and look, I don't know the number, but it's 12 ways to help with social skills.

11:29I believe it was from August 2025. It's really, really helpful. So again, I'm just normalizing, hey, this happened, right? And so another one is I model it. I would normalize this with Casey. Hey, Case, remember earlier when I cut that lady off in traffic earlier? That was a bad choice. See, I was in a hurry. I was impatient and I put my needs ahead of others and that just caused me to be selfish. And it hurt another person and it didn't reflect who I want to be. So next time, here's what I'm going to do differently. And I have to be honest, this just happened. We were over hiking and on the other side of the mountain here, I'm a grown man.

12:11He's a grown adult. And I was just impatient at this four-way stop because the other people didn't know how to handle four-way stop. But besides the fact of my own judgment there, I wasn't patient. And I ended up, I think, causing distress to an older lady. Well, that's not what I want, who I want to be. And so I just told Casey, right? Like normalize some of this stuff. You know why? It makes it easier for your kids to admit their mistakes and own up to things because it's like, no, this is just part of natural life. Every single day, I'm probably going to do a couple of things that don't reflect who I want to be and aren't always the best choices.

12:52So we just make it part of the family ethos, so to speak, of like, yeah, we own up to our mistakes because we're human. That's how it works. Not excusing it. Anyway, so the other good part of that is then it's not just two parents or one parent and a teacher focusing on one kid's behavior. You're just normalizing. Everybody in the family has things to work on. Number five, measuring a child's behavior like this, it's just not a good idea. Imagine your boss saying, hey, you're not getting a raise because you didn't do a good job. That doesn't mean anything. It's too generic. It's not specific enough.

13:34It's why I always hated the idea of saying, oh, okay, you get a cookie because you've been good today, right? Or asking kids, are you being good? What does good even mean? It honestly would always depended on my mood. Look, if I was in a good mood, not stressed, my kids can do a lot of things in there with being good. But if I'm impatient and stressed, then everything can be misinterpreted as being bad behavior. So it's a useless measuring tool. I also don't like it because how many kids and how many of you internalized, I'm a bad kid, I'm a failure. That happens more often than we know. And it can take years or decades or a lifetime for some of you to unwind or change that negative soundtrack inside your soul.

14:27How many of you have ever felt deep down, I really don't deserve something good or someone good. I'm not worthy of good things happening to me because I was bad as a kid. So let's throw that out the window. I also don't like too much detailed introspection over every single day. Some days just stink. They're just bad days. So you get a good night's sleep. You start fresh the next day. It's like asking your spouse every day, how do you feel about our relationship? Right? It's just too much. We're in it for the long term. And if you overanalyze things every single day, you'll create problems. And inside of our kids, like every single day, you're testing, jumping, you're like, how did you do today?

15:19How did you? That is overwhelming. So number six, I get why teachers do this. I have compassion for teachers. It's a nearly impossible job now. But the idea of using smiley faces and frown faces to represent a seven-hour day is absurd. How would you like it if every day before you left work, you had to stop by your boss's office and she gave you a sticker to wear home with a smiley face or a frown face on it. Like your entire day at work could be reduced to such a choice based on capricious standards, including whether your boss was having a good day that day. And then you walk into your home and your spouse sees the sticker on your shirt and then he or she adopts a frown face or look of disappointment before even connecting with you and then asks, like, why were you bad at work?

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19:57And we miss recognizing that for hours, your child put in a lot of effort to hold it together. And then there's a certain nihilism or fatalism that begins to take root. I'm never going to succeed anyway. So why even try? If I'm going to be on red, I may as well just go for it. As soon as I get to school, I'll get right to red. No one notices all the things I didn't do wrong all throughout the day. No one notices all the good, hard choices I made not to blurt out, not to say something, not to react to someone. It would be much meaningful to reward your child by saying, you know what, you're making so much progress at not reacting, at getting ready in the morning, at not blurting out in class.

20:48So let's do that. Number eight, the reports from school place too much emphasis on traits or activities that are just not important. So think about it this way. Let's say you have a surgeon, a salesperson, and a mechanic. The surgeon successfully saves lives, repairs nerve endings, and removes tumors from a spine. But all we focus on is that she's not always great with paperwork and office management. It's like knocking a high-achieving salesperson with record sales who sends in their expense reports a few days late. Or it's like knocking the mechanic who can solve the most complex problems in the shop but leaves dirty shop towels on the floor or sometimes forgets to clock in on time.

21:32The danger is we're allowing ourselves to be sidetracked and we're missing an opportunity to cultivate the more important skills in our kids. The reports from school are often based on arbitrary standards that our kids are naturally not good at doing. Sitting still, memorizing information, getting along with peers their own age, participating in class. And they're often based on skills they're not going to have to replicate in the real world. Look, I'm raising my kids to be successful in the adult world, not just get good marks in an arbitrary environment. And if you judge any person's day by their natural weaknesses, they will fail every day.

22:11Besides instilling constant failure and negativity, placing so much emphasis on being good at these less important skills means you're not focusing on developing and rewarding more important traits like critical thinking skills, problem solving, leadership, creativity, taking risks, making decisions. I'd rather focus on rewarding those more important traits than just having good behavior. So I love the idea of creating your own report card. Create your own report card for your child, measuring the traits necessary for success in the adult world because that's where your kids shine. It's a nice counterbalance to what kids experience in school.

22:52I'll give you a quick one. It's just true. Casey is not great at following directions, but he is highly conscientious and very responsible, and he's a great leader. See, you choose. You can't be good at everything, and so create that report card. When we place too much emphasis on things that aren't important, we're abdicating our leadership roles. See, we have perspective and we need to teach our kids, hey, here's what's most important. And in those areas, oh, you're crushing it. Does that mean we ignore those areas in which our kids are struggling or falling short? Of course not. It just means we don't give it more energy than it deserves.

23:31And it also means when we identify a weakness, we give kids tools to overcome that deficiency. So let's go through a couple examples of tools we can give our kids. Number nine, I think it's cruel to label a child as good or bad without giving them specific tools to help them overcome weaknesses. I'd rather focus on proactively giving kids tools to succeed than punishing them for failing.

24:01Or rewarding kids for meeting arbitrary standards that don't matter. Look, some kids are just naturally good at sitting still all day and memorizing information, raising their hands in class. They're not even working hard at it. But their whole childhood, they're like, oh, you're such a good student. But they didn't take any risks or try anything hard necessarily. So let's give specific tools. Look, imagine that you start a new job and you're a little excited and a little anxious about it because it's a new company, a new job, perhaps something you've never really done before. And you get to the office and there's no training.

24:35No one shows you how to do the job, how to be successful. Every day you show up and your bosses expect you to complete your work, but no one ever shows you how. And you just get graded on whether you did a good job or a bad job. You'd be frustrated and angry and confused. And you'd be pleading, please, I want to do a good job and be successful. No one has shown me how to do my job. You just told me I'm failing. And that's what happens to our kids a lot. So instead of just saying, hey, if you don't stop this, you're going to lose recess or the class field trip, you can say, hey, this is for like a busy kid in class, right?

25:17He's always moving. You know why I love having you in my class? Because you like to help. You're really strong. And I can count on you when I have a special mission. So you and I, we're going to have a secret signal. When I touch my ear like this, I want you to go to the back of the class, grab that blue backpack, and take it next door to Miss Johnson. Now, it's kind of heavy, but I believe you're capable. She's going to need you to bring the red backpack from her classroom back. Do you think you can do that? And watch what happens. I just set this child up for success. I gave the child a specific mission, very specific.

25:52Gave the child some movement and very specific directions. This allows the child to get sensory needs met by carrying something heavy while accomplishing something concrete. And then I got to end that scene by saying, oh man, great job. Thank you. As opposed to giving the child one more warning that if he can't sit still and pay attention off to make you miss recess. See, sometimes that 75 seconds of movement helps reset the child's body and concentration. So number 10, here's where we take this to the next level. Teach your kids how their brains work and how to advocate for themselves and how to control themselves.

26:31Here are three of my favorite examples of what I would ask you to do with your kids. I want your kids to understand how their brains work best because this is the brain they will have for the rest of their lives. This is their temperament. This is their nature. And it will impact how they study and complete assignments in college and how they get work done as adults throughout their careers. That's why I always encourage you, let your kids listen to our programs. Especially if you have a child who has traits associated with ADHD, let them listen to the ADHD University Series. They will completely understand their brains and how they're made or the one on the strong-willed child.

27:08So here are three ideas kids came up with and presented to their teachers or used in class. A first grader heard me talking about how fidgeting with textured objects actually improves concentration. so he told his mom oh that's why I like wearing my hoodie sweatshirt because I can play with the tassels and not get in trouble so he used some arts and crafts supplies like double-sided tape pipe cleaners beads and different textures like denim rabbits for buttons to create fidgets he can use in class they don't make any noise nobody sees them but they're comforting see that's awesome. A fifth grader told his teachers he gets a little anxious and overwhelmed and heard me talking about having something you feel in control of is calming.

27:59He's really good at tinkering with things, building and seeing patterns. So he asked his teachers if they would give him some special projects to work on for extra credit that he's actually really good at doing. One teacher leaves something undone every day and challenges him to use his detective skills, because our kids are great at seeing patterns, to figure it out. So he starts the day with a positive, with a sense of accomplishment. And now the teacher's saying, man, you're such a good problem solver, instead of just starting the day with why can't you sit still? And I love this one. This was a junior in high school, heard us talking about how people like us tend to manage our energy, not our time, and work on momentum.