Chores & Rewards
Reward ideas for kids that aren't toys (and don't cost much)
Most reward charts stall because the prize cupboard runs out of ideas and money. What to put in a kids' reward store instead: time, privileges, choice and experiences, and how to price them so the system keeps working.
The short answer: the best rewards are rarely objects. A reward store stocked with toys gets expensive within a month and stops motivating within two, because each new toy resets the child's baseline. Rewards built from time, privileges, choice and experiences cost little, don't accumulate in a cupboard, and keep their value — because they are things a child wants repeatedly rather than owns once.
Key takeaways
- Objects satiate; experiences don't. A child who owns the toy stops wanting it. A child who got to choose Friday's dinner will want to choose again.
- Stock four price points. Something earnable today, something by the weekend, something in a fortnight, and one genuinely big thing. Miss the cheap tier and younger children give up before they start.
- Privileges are free and often the most wanted. Staying up thirty minutes later costs nothing and outranks most things you could buy.
- Let them save toward something shared. A reward two siblings pool for turns a rivalry into a joint project.
Doesn't rewarding chores undermine doing them for their own sake? It can, if money is the only currency and every job has a price. The middle position most families settle on is covered in should you pay kids for chores.
How many things should be in the store? Six to ten. Fewer feels like no choice; more turns picking into a chore of its own.
Why the toy cupboard stops working
Three predictable failures, and they arrive in this order:
- Cost. Rewards that are objects have to keep being bought. Within a couple of months the system is a standing expense, and the natural response — raising the price of everything — reads to the child as the goalposts moving.
- Satiation. The point of a toy is to own it. Once owned, it stops being a motivator, so the next one has to be slightly better. This escalates quickly and has no ceiling.
- Clutter. Every parent who has run a prize box knows the cupboard of barely-touched plastic. The reward stopped being the thing and became the transaction.
None of this means rewards don't work. It means objects are the weakest kind. The design rules that keep a chore system alive are in building a chore–reward system kids stick with; this article is about what to actually put in it.
The four categories that keep their value
Time. Extra screen time, a later bedtime on a non-school night, thirty minutes of a parent's undivided attention. Time is infinitely renewable and children value it more than adults expect.
Privileges. Choosing the film. Sitting in the front seat. Picking the music in the car. Skipping one chore, once. Having a friend stay over. These cost nothing and are wanted repeatedly.
Choice. Choosing Friday's dinner, the weekend outing, the order of the bedtime story. Autonomy is the scarce resource in a child's day, and handing over a decision is worth more than handing over an object.
Experiences. Baking something together. A trip to the pool. A bike ride with a stop for chips. The park after dark with a torch. These double as time with you, which is usually the actual reward.
Price them across four tiers
A store where everything costs roughly the same fails at both ends: nothing is achievable today, and nothing is worth saving for.
| Tier | Roughly | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Today | 1 day of jobs | Choose tonight's music, 15 extra minutes, pick the pudding |
| This week | 3–4 days | Film night with a chosen film, a friend over, a later bedtime |
| Fortnight | 10–14 days | A trip out, a small thing they've actually asked for, baking day |
| Saving goal | 4–6 weeks | The bike, the concert, the day trip — one at a time |
The bottom tier is the one families skip, and it is the one that decides whether a six-year-old engages at all. A child who cannot reach anything within a day has no evidence the system is real.
The top tier does a different job: it gives the whole thing a point. One visible saving goal, chosen by the child, is what turns a sequence of small transactions into something that feels like progress.
Let siblings pool for a shared reward
If you have more than one child, allow a reward that several of them contribute to — a family outing, a games console game they both play, a trip. This does something a per-child chart cannot: it makes one sibling's effort useful to the other, which is the opposite of what a leaderboard does.
It is also the cheapest available fix for the fairness argument, because the question stops being who earned more and becomes whether the shared thing is close. There is more on that dynamic in dividing chores between siblings.
Quokka supports this directly — a reward can take contributions from more than one child, and the detail view shows who put in what.
Rules that stop the store degrading
- Never take earned rewards away as a punishment. It converts the whole system from something a child builds into something that can be confiscated, and they will stop investing in it.
- Don't discount for good behaviour or a bad mood. A price that moves is a price to argue about.
- Refresh the list every month or two. Let the child suggest items. Anything nobody has chosen in six weeks comes off.
- Deliver promptly. A reward claimed on Saturday and delivered "sometime next week" teaches that the currency is not real.
Where screen time fits
Screen time is the single most-wanted reward in most households, and it is also the one parents are most reluctant to hand out — because it feels like solving a screen problem by giving more screens.
It works better than it sounds, for one reason: it changes what the child does when they want more. The alternative to earned minutes is not fewer minutes, it is a nightly negotiation that the child sometimes wins.
This is what Quokka is built around. Chores pay stars, stars convert into screen-time minutes at a rate you set, and the limits themselves are enforced by Apple's Family Controls rather than by you remembering to check. The reward store sits alongside it, so minutes are one option among several rather than the only currency in the house.
Frequently asked questions
What should a reward cost in stars or points?
Whatever makes the bottom tier reachable in about a day of ordinary jobs. Set that first, then price everything else relative to it — the absolute numbers don't matter, the ratios do.
Should younger and older siblings have the same prices?
Prices, yes. Jobs, no. Keep one price list so nothing looks rigged, and set difficulty through which chores each child is given — see age-appropriate chores by age.
What if my child only ever picks screen time?
That is fine, and it is information. If it persists, check the other tiers are genuinely attractive: often the non-screen options are things a parent wants rather than things the child does.
Can rewards and pocket money coexist?
Yes, and separating them helps. Many families run pocket money as an unconditional baseline and keep the reward store for things earned on top, which avoids turning every household job into paid work.
How do I stop the system becoming a negotiation?
Write the prices down and leave them alone for a month. Most negotiation comes from prices that have moved before — a child who has successfully argued a price down once will always try again.
