Tag: early childhood Pakistan

“Why Did My Friend Get More?” A Three-Year-Old’s Question About Rewards

Posted on by Ahmad Amirali

What a school attendance award taught me about motivation in the early years.

My three-and-a-half-year-old came home recently with a question I was not ready for.

“Why did my friend get a bigger reward? Why didn’t I get the same one?”

His school had introduced a full attendance award. Attend 90 to 100 per cent of the time, and the reward is bigger. Attend less, and it is smaller, or there is none.

My son cannot read a percentage. But he understood exactly who got more.

Let Us Be Fair to Rewards

Rewards are not villains, and the research does not say they are. A meta-analysis by Cameron and colleagues concluded that rewards are not generally harmful to motivation. Verbal rewards tended to raise interest, and rewards for tasks children find dull even increased their free-choice interest. The larger Deci, Koestner and Ryan review agrees on one thing: positive feedback strengthened both interest and free-choice behaviour.

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We Thought He Was Just a Quiet Child

Posted on by Ahmad Amirali

What the conversation around “virtual autism” is telling Pakistani parents, educators, and early childhood classrooms and why we are only beginning to listen.

There was a boy sitting in the corridor outside a parent workshop I was running last year. He must have been three, maybe three and a half. His mother was inside the session. He was with a domestic helper, parked on a plastic chair, a tablet propped in his lap.

He did not look up when I walked past. He did not look up when another child came and stood near him. He did not look up at all, for the entire two hours I was facilitating. He was not upset. He was not restless. He was perfectly, completely still.

On the way out, his mother mentioned almost as an aside that his nursery teacher had suggested he be assessed. He was not talking much. He did not play with the other children. He preferred to be alone.

“Woh bus khaamosh hai,” (He is just quiet,) she said. “Humein lagta tha yeh uski aadat hai.” (We thought it was just his nature.)

I have been thinking about that boy ever since.

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