Dr. Özgür Bolat on Why Rewards Backfire and the Real Science of Motivating Kids

Debbie:
Hey Dr. Bolat, welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
Thank you. Thank you so much, Debbie. I’m very excited to share my ideas. Thank you for this opportunity.

Debbie:
Well, I’m excited to get into it. When I heard about your book, which is called The Reward Trap, Why Rewards Backfire and the Real Science of Motivating Your Kids, it was such an easy yes for me to say, like, yes, we need to talk with you. Because these are motivation, how to handle rewards, if we should be using them at all, what does the science say about motivation, all of those things are so important to my community. So as a way to get into it, I’ve already read your formal bio, but will you just take a few minutes to talk about why this topic is such a draw for you. What is your personal stake in this conversation?

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
It’s very personal. The title says motivating kids, right? But the reward is more than that. It not only affects motivation, but also it affects self-esteem and your personality, how you grow up to be. So this is why it is personal. Like I was always successful in my school, like academic life. I ranked fifty-sixth among one million students. I got into a top college. I graduated as a valedictorian. Then I got a Fulbright scholarship, I got into Harvard and I had a perfect GPA. Then I did my PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK, and then I spent one year at MIT. Then I won international awards, you know. So I was very successful. Then I finished my PhD. I started to work in my professional life. Then everything was perfect, but I felt a little bit anxious and I didn’t know why I was anxious. I couldn’t name it. Then the more I thought about it, I started to think about it and then I found it. I am dependent on success and I can’t be happy unless I am successful. In school life it’s very easy. You know, you got a good grade, you know, you feel successful. But in life, it’s nothing like this. Even if you see yourself successful in real life, others may not agree. So I said, wow, what am I gonna do? Why am I so dependent on external motivation or external validation? Then I asked myself, why did I grow up like this? Then it all went back to childhood. You know, the more parents use rewards and praise, the more the child becomes approval seeking. So I found that I was an approval seeking person. I thought I have to change this and I have to tell parents if you do this, this is what’s gonna happen. So this is why I was so interested in this topic. The reward is only one tool. The real issue is how parents control their children and how children turn out to be dependent on external validation. This is the main issue. Yeah.

Debbie:
Yeah. Yeah. And of course, like my brain, I’m like, I want, I’m so curious to know, like personally, how you unpacked all of that. Like, you know, that’s, you figured that out and you’re like, this is what’s going on. And so was this book part of your exploration or maybe healing from that type of mindset?

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, yes, definitely. I have my second book ready, which is called Praise Trap. So after this book, hopefully in one or two years, that book will come out as well. And yeah, so I started with reward because it is the most obvious one and it is the most used one. As I cite in my book, like seventy percent of adults say it motivates people. So there’s a big misconception. I’m trying to help parents find ways to motivate their children better, increase their self-esteem and help them grow up like a responsible adult. Yeah.

Debbie:
Yeah. So let’s define reward then. And I just wanna, I pulled out something from your book. You said a reward is a desired object or activity offered to a person conditional on a specific behavior or outcome. And the same desired object offered unconditionally is not a reward. So I think that’s really interesting. Could you unpack that for us a little bit?

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
Yes, for instance, let’s say you want an iPad from me. I’m a father, you want an iPad. Okay. I say, okay, you want an iPad. There are many ways to do this. First, of course I will buy it for you, I can go and buy it. Second thing, okay, you have to contribute a little bit, give me some of your pocket money and I will, you know, top it and I will buy it for you. Or the third, I will buy it for you only if all your grades are A. And this is a reward and this is conditional. And the child will think, it’s the big problem. Why doesn’t my father buy me something just because he loves me? And it’s like, what if I can’t get all A’s? So he’s not gonna buy an iPad. Does it mean he doesn’t love me? So he will question all this. One of my friends told me an example from her life. After she read my book, she said she wanted to go to Walt Disney. And her father says, if you get all A’s, I will take you there. And she was very happy. And she went to school and she shared this with her friends. And one of her friends says, we are going as well. And they were little children, of course. They’re like, how would you go? You are a very lazy student. It’s like it has nothing to do with my laziness. So what if you don’t get A’s? What are you talking about? It’s like, so you don’t have to get A’s to go to Walt Disney? She said no. And at that moment she realized her father is taking her no matter what. My father will take me only if I get good grades. And it’s conditional love. I think it is the most dangerous and most hidden dynamic. Yeah.

Debbie:
Yeah. Well, yeah. So that idea of conditional love, what is really at stake? I mean, you talked about low self-esteem as being part of this, but let’s even take it one step further to the relationship with our parents. Like having that sense of growing up that love is conditional, what does that do to a relationship?

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
If you grow up thinking your father’s or mother’s love is conditional and you don’t believe in real love, so when you have a relationship with adults, if they say for instance, hey, we love you, you won’t believe it. It’s like he’s lying. I’m not lovable. He says this because he gets something in return. And this is the first thing. He doesn’t believe that he is lovable. He doesn’t believe that he’s worthy of love because he created a mental model that love is conditional. Second, if someone says I love you, okay, he or she doesn’t believe this, and then the second thing happens. He or she starts to disrespect you because he says, if I am not worthy of love, and if she says she loves me, if she’s loving a person like me, she must be like that as well. Do you understand what I’m saying? Like because

Debbie:
Yeah, that idea of like if you like me, there must be something wrong with you. Is that yeah.

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
Yes. If you like a person like me who is broken, you must be broken as well. And I have no respect for you. So that happens too in adult relationships. They test. They test. They can’t believe they are lovable. And so you think you are not lovable. You think people will not love you. So what do you do then? So what can you do without love? And they start to think I should make people like me. So how can I do this? By being very successful, by having a status, by having a lot of money, by having prestige. These are all external validation tools, and they become very successful. And they become happy but in order to continue being happy they have to be successful all the time so they live in anxiety. And if they can’t be successful or if they cannot have those external validation tools then they go into depression and so they are anxious all the time. They work all the time. They can’t stop and be with themselves because their thoughts are too intimidating. So they have to be busy all the time. In the essence, they just wait for death to come and they just deceive themselves. Yeah.

Debbie:
Yeah. I mean, I think there must be so many, you know, I’m resonating with a lot of what you’re saying just on a personal level. Like there are so many of us, maybe in my generation growing up, where, you know, maybe it was all kind of that more authoritarian parenting, right? So it was rewards and punishments. And so it’s a lot for adults to unpack and to kind of realize, gosh, I’m looking to fill this need in me in all the wrong ways. Like I’ll never fill this need in me because it’s all coming from the outside. But when we can raise our kids in a different way, we’re saving them that, you know, challenge down the road. We can kind of help them grow up, kind of knowing, like not looking for love or validation or to feel good about themselves and have self-worth from outside influences.

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
Yeah, yeah. It’s very difficult to raise an internally validated child without first looking at your own motivation. So most parents want their children to be successful because that will make them look successful. And yeah, I was in another show with Scott. He told my story. It was a problem with the child’s eyes. Okay, so he had to go through therapy, eye therapy. At the age of five, he worked so hard and his vision got better and better, he was able to see. Yeah. So the last session, parents and the kid were in the room with the therapist, and the child’s vision got better. And Scott said to his child, I am so proud of you. And the therapist said, let’s call the child’s name Matt. Matt, can you tell your father, who did the work here? Who should be proud here? And the child said, Dad, I did it. I worked hard. I am proud of myself. And Scott thought, yeah, so he should be proud, not me. Then he realized, in my seminars, in my workshops, I always say, don’t say I am proud of you, because when you say I am proud of you, okay, if I am proud of you, what will I feel if you fail? The child will think I will be ashamed of you. And also, we know the studies by Carol Dweck, you know, you are smart, you are hardworking. She also tested this in one group. She said, after success, she said, I’m proud of you. To the other group, she said, you must have worked hard. And she found the same result. Those who heard I am proud of you, they developed more helplessness. So I’m proud of you is a problem as well.

Debbie:
Yeah. It’s so fascinating. I’ll just say I do think that language is so, like it’s the intention of saying I’m so proud of you is so good. And in receiving that in that moment, it may feel like it really fills you up. Like, my gosh, my dad’s proud of me, right? But then not having that, the absence of that feeling, like you said. What does this mean if my dad or parent isn’t proud of me in this moment? And then you can internalize that as a negative. So it’s such a powerful concept.

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
Yes. I will tell you a story, okay. I came from a small town, okay, a small town, and I have two brothers. You know, I was very successful, I was on TV and people from my town knew me and they were like, yeah, we are so proud of you. One day my brother and I went to a dinner. And there were like eight people already. We went there, and a guy stood up. Hey, Ozgur, do you recognize me? I said, sorry, no. We are from the same town. I said, sorry, I couldn’t recognize. And he turned to people and he said, Ozgur is from our town. We are so proud of him. And then he added this: his brother, we love him, but we are proud of Ozgur. So then it clicked like, what does it mean? What is more important? To be loved or to be proud of? You know? So he said, we love your brother, but we are proud of you. Then I realized love is more important. We want our children to feel loved, rather than to feel, you know, proud of. Of course we can be proud of them, but it shouldn’t come before love.

Debbie:
Yeah. So good. Okay, so in your book, you cite research showing that sixty-eight percent of adults believe that rewards increase motivation. So I’d love it if you could say, you know, scientifically, what does the research show? But also why? Like why are we so convinced that this is the right way to get our kids motivated to do things?

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
We are so convinced because we see results. Okay. So we see results. If I give you a reward, you will do your homework. If I give you a reward, you will tidy up your room. If I give you a reward that is desirable enough, then you know, you will do your work. So I give you rewards, you do your homework, I see a result, then I believe it works. But then we should ask this question. Am I after compliance or behavior? Or am I after ownership, commitment, and engagement? So I see the effect in behavior, but how about real motivation? So how can we test this? When we give a reward, we get compliance, it is clear, visible. How can we test that it harms motivation? This is how it is tested in research. So there are two groups. One group they give a puzzle and they say for each success we will give you two dollars. The other group, no reward, just do your puzzle. They look at the results. Those who are rewarded get more puzzles done. Of course it makes sense. The second round, they say there is no reward now. And the first group says, if there’s no rewards, why would I do this? Then they were less interested in the task. And also in between, there was a free period, okay, and they gave them the same puzzles, magazines, other distractors, and they watched for eight minutes. So if you are interested, you would still continue to do the puzzle, right? And then they look at it. The rewarded group were less interested in doing the puzzle. They read magazines, but the other group was still interested. So you get the compliance with a reward, but when reward is withdrawn, then behavior stops as well. What we want is not control, but for instance, let’s give an example. If the child doesn’t want to do homework, what I want is not to make the child do the homework. What I want is to help my child want to do homework. So rather than that, I would say, you don’t want to do your homework. Yes. Well, what challenges are there? Can I help you? How can we solve this? So I’m trying to understand my child, I’m trying to understand why my child doesn’t want to do it, and I want to help my child. I’m not judging, I’m not offering rewards. I’m just trying to understand and help. This creates real motivation, not just compliance.

Debbie:
Yeah. You wrote in your book something that I talk about a lot, which is this question people ask me all the time when I speak to groups of parents, how do I get my child to X? Right? How do I get my child? And I’m like, okay, you can’t get your child to do anything. Like we can’t make our child want to do anything. So I love that kind of reframe and I want to tie this back to something you shared in the book. You talked about how rewards lessen their impact over time. And you shared the story of a parent who was incentivizing her son to do his homework via rewards when he was in high school because she really wanted to be sure he got into a good college. And this is a situation so many parents are in. Like, you know, this matters so much. The stakes are high. We just got to do what we need to do. And she was also worried at the same time, well, what’s gonna happen when he’s in college, and I’m not going to be there to do that incentivization. So could you talk about that kind of short run versus long run and what are we actually setting up? What kind of a dynamic are we setting up?

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
Yeah. First of all, if the child is in high school and I am still offering reward, the child is not a curious or self-motivated learner. I should have created a child who loves learning in primary school or middle school. And the child doesn’t want to do homework and then if I offer reward, even if the child studies, I have to increase the rewards all the time. You know, if you pass your school with an honor, I will give you an iPad. The child says, yes, okay. The next time I should buy something bigger, something bigger, something bigger, and there’s no end to it. And there’s another issue here. If the child thinks he cannot get an honor, then he will be even more anxious. It’s like I’m saying to a blind man, if you can tell me which color this is, I will give you a reward. The blind man says, I can’t see, you know. So there’s another problem here. You know, even if the child studies well and gets into college and there is no one to offer a reward, then the child will lose interest, develop learned helplessness, and even be disappointed in himself and maybe he will even think he’s disappointing his parents. And I talk about this in my book, there is a mastery orientation and performance orientation. And research shows mastery oriented people are as successful as performance oriented people and they also enjoy learning. But performance oriented people, they can be successful, but they pay a big price. They are usually more anxious. So if you keep rewarding your children, you will create a performance oriented child and the child will develop anxiety in college, even if he’s successful. If he thinks he can’t reach his high level he will give up. So I mean it may not happen like this, but there’s a high risk if you keep, yeah, because reward turns students, children, into performance oriented people.

Debbie:
Yeah, it’s all about the outcome. And for kids who are more perfectionistic, you know, we know a lot of our gifted and 2e learners tend to be more perfectionistic or have more fixed mindset. So they are probably more at risk of having that performance orientation anyway. So we could be really contributing to that if we focus on rewards.

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
Yeah. On another note, my own research, I found this. If a child has a fixed mindset, not a growth mindset, but has a fixed mindset, if he’s attributing success to effort, not intelligence, effort, then he will not develop learned helplessness. So we always say a growth mindset is better than a fixed mindset, which is true, only if the child is attributing success to intelligence. If the child is attributing effort, it doesn’t matter. Your mindset doesn’t matter. Yeah. So I found this and I shared this with Carol Dweck and hopefully I will write up and publish this finding. I think it’s a very important finding. So first we should teach our children to attribute success to effort. It’s more important, yeah.

Debbie:
Yeah, that’s great. Super fascinating. Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about parents who have been using rewards. And again, I’m just gonna say, you know, my kiddo just turned 22 yesterday, but you know, years ago, back in elementary school, we certainly had, because of challenges in the classroom and things and dysregulation, we had the reward charts. Like we were doing that because at the time, those are the tools we were given, right? And I, you know, as soon as I kind of realized, gosh, no, we need to kind of like strip this away and stop focusing on rewards. And I’m so glad that we did that. But it was daunting, like, have we set up this kind of house of cards? What’s gonna happen when we pull that? So yeah, so here’s my two-pronged question. One, are rewards always a bad thing, especially when we’re talking about neurodivergent kids? And then let’s answer that and then we’ll talk about what to do if we have implemented reward systems and we want to start pulling it back.

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
Okay. So I think you can use rewards when you first introduce a child to a new activity if the child doesn’t want to do it. So in my book there is an example, a teacher told me this. He was a horse riding coach, and some children were scared of horses. And he said, like, there is nothing you should be scared of. Some children believed, some children still said no. And he used rewards to introduce horses to children. So I introduced the child to an activity for the first time, but after that first time, or in that first experience, I have to create intrinsic motivation. So for instance, the child should have fun, the child should connect with the coach, or you should do something. So you are using a reward as a bait to create internal motivation. So that’s the first thing. If you are using reward to make the child do something, so the next time you want your child to do something, he or she says no, then the first thing you should do: catch yourself and stop. And rather than offering a reward, ask this question. What does my child need? Why doesn’t he wanna do homework? Or why doesn’t he wanna go to sleep early? Okay, so let’s say he doesn’t want to go to bed early. So you are making your child go to bed with a reward. Imagine the reason the child doesn’t wanna sleep, he’s scared. So when you offer a reward, you make your child go to bed in that scared moment. And the child says, look, I’m scared, and my mom or dad is leaving me alone. The reward got the compliance and made the problem even worse. So I ask my child, why don’t you want to go to bed? It’s like I’m scared. And sometimes children use that to spend more time with their parents. If there’s an excuse, then you should ask yourself, we haven’t connected today. You should understand why the child is scared. Maybe sometimes you find out he’s not really scared. He’s scared of ambiguity in his life. So you have to fix that problem. Sometimes being scared of the dark or a monster is a symptom of not knowing his routines. So you understand and you can do it by observing, you can do it by asking questions, communicating, having a relationship and the child says his need, then you will meet his need. So there’s no need to control the child. Yeah. So the next time stop and ask what does my child need? How can I help my child? Yeah.

Debbie:
Right. Yeah, cause otherwise just barreling ahead is really invalidating their entire experience. Yeah.

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
Yes. Yes. Another example from my parents in the workshop. The child doesn’t want to do math homework. And the mom says, why don’t you do your homework? He says, I forgot my pen in school. The mother got even more angry. She said, you forgot your pen. There are millions of pens in this house. You can use any of them. It’s like, no, I can only use that pen. Then she told me this story, and I said, okay, you have to understand why the child doesn’t want to do homework and why that child is using the pen as an excuse. There’s an even deeper problem. Then after the next session, she told me the child can’t do math, the child doesn’t understand math. If he tries to solve it and if he cannot solve it, he will be embarrassed of himself. So he preferred that his mom be angry rather than being embarrassed. And why is he using the pen as an excuse? Because whenever the child opens up, the mom judges and he can’t share his real need or feelings. And I said to mom, there’s an even deeper problem, the child can’t share his feelings and his thoughts with you. You have to create a safe environment and stop judging. Always move from judging to understanding. Yeah. So what the child here needs is not another reward. What the child here needs is support to do math better and understanding from his mother. Yeah.

Debbie:
Yeah. So, so good. Great example. So, okay, so let’s say for parents who are listening to this, and you know, I have known many parents who have explicitly said to me, the only way I can get my child to do X, Y, and Z is through rewards. Like they have gotten into that situation where everything has suddenly become dependent on rewards to get anything done. And these might be kids who have a strong, you know, kind of demand avoidance temperament or anxiety. So for a parent who has kind of set up this dynamic, how do they begin to unpack that or to kind of bring it back and start pulling away that and shift the locus of control, I guess, to our kids.

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
I published a study, okay, this is my research. I measured how often parents praise their children, how often they offer reward, how often they punish, and how much they disrespect their children. So I measured disrespect with these items: I make fun of my child, I embarrass my child in front of others, I invalidate my child’s feelings, I interrupt his sentences, and I make my child feel guilty, sometimes I tell my child you should be ashamed of yourself. So all these sentences are disrespectful. Yeah. So I measured four things: reward, punishment, praise, and disrespect. You know what I found? Those who reward and praise are also the same parents who offer punishment. This is the first thing, because it is controlling. I try to control with a punishment. If it doesn’t work, I do it with rewards. It’s all about consequences and outcome. The second thing I found, the more a parent disrespects the child, the more reward and praise he uses, because the parent wants to control. So the first thing they need to do is not at the behavior level, at the mindset level. We should move from a controlling mindset to a connection mindset. So I have to see my child as a person with their own feelings, thoughts, and fears. So when I look at my child, when I see him as a person, then I connect with that child. So when you connect then, as I said before, then you want to help, you want to understand. And then you ask your child, okay, you don’t want to read a book, and I make you read a book with a reward, and I’m sorry. Let’s have a conversation. If you don’t like reading a book, do you want to try different exercises or activities to start liking books? We will read together. And there are many scientific ways to help a child love reading a book. So you apologize to your child and you see that child as a person, then you work together. So it’s not really raising a child, it’s like living with a child, seeing that child as a companion to your life.

Debbie:
Yeah. I love it so much. Yeah. That shifting from controlling mindset to connection mindset. That is really, that’s everything. And yeah, it just feels really good. And so simple. Our kids are whole people, right? We need the fact that we need to remind ourselves that they are their own person.

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
Yes, yes. Yes. Okay, and I tell parents, like if you change your mindset, the right words will come out of your mouth naturally. And they say, how? Let me give you an example. I am an associate professor. I’m in a seminar now. Let’s say you saw me reading a book in the back. You would come to me and what would you say? I would say, hey, what are you reading? Is it a good book? Do you recommend it? Yeah, this is what you would say to me. Imagine a six-year-old child reading a book. What would you say? You’d say, like, well done. You’re a good kid, well done. Why are you not asking the same question to the child? Because you are not interested in the child’s thoughts. So we don’t treat children as adults, but we should treat children with the same respect we show to adults, then the right words will come out of your mouth.

Debbie:
That’s great. One of the things I just wanted to circle back to is, when you were talking a few minutes ago, this idea that rewards and punishments are two sides of the same coin. You talk about this in your book, and I had never thought about it that way, but your example. If you do your homework, you can play on the computer. That’s a reward. If you don’t do your homework, you can’t play on the computer, that’s punishment. Right. So it just made so much sense. Like I think, you know, we may be not using punishments or negative consequences, but at the same time, if we are relying on positive reinforcement in the form of rewards, it’s essentially the same, it’s triggering the same kind of thing in our kids’ brains.

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
Yeah. I mean in the literature technically it’s not the same, but in practice it’s the same thing. Whenever you offer a reward, you are threatening your child. You can’t have it if you don’t do it. Yeah.

Debbie:
Right.

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
And then yeah, go.

Debbie:
Well, one of the things that jumped out at me that I pivoted many, many, many years ago from saying if, the word if, which to me is conditional, if you do this, then this can happen. And so I started using when instead, because I thought that was somehow better. Is when better? Like when you finish doing this, we can do this, as opposed to if you finish this, we can do this.

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
So okay, I get asked this question many times, then I ask this question. If the child doesn’t want to do it, can he or she still do the second thing when you use when?

Debbie:
That’s a clarifying question, isn’t it? No, I guess back then I would have said no.

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
Yeah. Yeah, no, then it’s a condition.

Debbie:
I was trying to not trigger a demand avoidant reaction in my child, but my agenda was still the same, is what I’m hearing you say. Yeah.

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
Yes, control the child, yeah. But you can, I mean in real life you can say let’s go to park. Okay, let’s finish this first, then we can go to park. It’s the intention. If the intention is not control, then that’s fine. If the intention is control, then it’s conditional. Yeah.

Debbie:
So good.

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
Let me give one example about the rewards as well, how it affects personality. There was a six year old child, okay? You know, in America in the UK it’s different, but in our culture we’re more collectivists and we hug each other. Yeah. So it’s not okay, I think, in the US, yeah, sometimes it depends, yeah, yeah.

Debbie:
Depends, but yeah, not as much, yeah.

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
Yeah. Not as much, but here it’s okay even if the child just came here for the first time. Hey little child, you’re so sweet, come and I will kiss you and the child comes. It’s very normal here. Okay, there was a six-year-old child, and we were very good friends all the time. We hug and we kiss each other, we play with each other, you know, we love each other. Perfect. One day I said, hey, let’s hug. And she said, no. And then I said, okay. And then I didn’t make the child come and hug me, then I forgot about it, and we were having dinner. Like one minute later, she came and hugged me from behind. And I wondered what changed in one minute. And her mother said, if you hug Ozgur I will give you a treat. And so here, reward. What did the reward do? The reward made the child do something she didn’t want to do. So the reward crushed her will. And I think it’s not good. It’s crushing the will and the child had to do something just because someone powerful promised a reward. Yeah.

Debbie:
Right. And you think about what that looks like, you know, for young people to grow up feeling like other people’s needs come before mine. I can’t speak up for what I want. I don’t have autonomy over my body. Like it becomes this really complicated thing. So clearly we could talk about this stuff for hours. This is super fascinating to me. But let me name your book again. It’s called The Reward Trap, Why Rewards Backfire and the Real Science of Motivating Kids. And I just, before we say goodbye, is there anything that we didn’t touch upon that you want to make sure that my listeners think about?

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
So we shouldn’t look at the reward at a very superficial level, at the motivation level. It’s very superficial. There’s much more important things such as self-esteem and personality development and character development and rewards affect all of them. And also when we offer a reward, if the child feels he will be embarrassed if he can’t get the reward, he will cheat. There are many studies. Those who are rewarded are more likely to cheat. So you are creating a person with a character flaw. So it affects everything. Here, if you wanna change this, we should start with the mindset, from control to connection.

Debbie:
So, listeners, I just wanna say I was mentioning this to Ozgur before we started recording, but you know, the book, I found it such an easy, compelling read, and it’s full of the studies and the research and so many anecdotes. It just brings it all to life. So I just wanna say, you cover so much in here in a way that felt very accessible as a parent and that I can kind of better understand how to parent this way and how to kind of reframe how I approach motivation.

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
Thank you, thank you so much, thank you.

Debbie:
And so for listeners who wanna connect with you, where is the best place to find you online?

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
Yeah, I have my own website, ozgurbolat.co.uk. I am on LinkedIn, Instagram, X, and I have my own website as I said. My book is on Amazon UK and Amazon.com. Yeah, you can connect with me everywhere.

Debbie:
Awesome. Okay. Well, listeners, as always, I will have an extensive show notes page where you can find all the links we just talked about, as well as stuff that came up. I’ll have some things with Carol Dweck in there and some other conversations we’ve had about motivation, just so you can dive deeper. So thank you so much. I really enjoyed this conversation. I really appreciate you sharing today.

Dr. Özgür Bolat:
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.