The Addiction to Rewards
Once you have start to build true understanding, you can use it to read and learn more. If you learn through a game, you just want to play more games.
Games are set up to hold attention through rewards. This becomes what the child seeks out: reward without true understanding. They can start to learn to read, but they can’t read to learn.
Reading is a skill that, once learned, can open up the world. A child who learns to read in a calm, instructive way will want to use their new skills to read. A child who learns through games will want more games.
Research confirms this pattern. Studies show that tangible rewards have a substantial undermining effect on intrinsic motivation, especially in children, because these rewards make them feel controlled and reduce their sense of autonomy.
The Confidence Crisis
Children who learn through games are often not as confident in their skills because of all the noise that accompanies gamified learning.
Once the reward is no longer there, their drive to read becomes hugely diminished.
When these children encounter real books or reading situations without the game framework, they get put off by blank words on a page. No characters making silly noises to keep them going.
They give up very quickly because they’re not being rewarded every step of the way. Their intrinsic motivation is much lower, and because of the continuous rewards, they’re not as capable of self-learning and self-motivation.
This creates a devastating cycle. Everything becomes boring, too hard, not relevant to them, and not worth their time.
Disrupting Sensitive Periods
The child naturally has periods of intense focus on individual topics and areas. Being able to progress through these in a natural, self-autonomous way builds perseverance, internal rewards, confidence, self-belief, and much deeper understanding.
They develop these skills through their choice and their efforts.
A child given games to learn lacks all of these important skills needed to truly master anything. Research reveals that while gamification shows positive effects on engagement, it produces mixed outcomes for actual learning results, with no solid evidence of improved learning outcomes in primary education.
The process of learning matters as much as the content itself.
The Long-Term Damage
A child with internal motivation and belief in themselves can achieve momentous learning given the right environment.
A child who learns through rewards, external stimuli, and shallow learning experiences will not have the self-confidence to learn new things independently. They will always need a teacher to feed them information.
They learn in a shallow way with little context to the bigger picture or the real world.
I’ve seen this pattern many times. Children who love their games may seem to have good understanding and motivation to learn. But take them out of that environment, and they have very low motivation to try new things, especially if not presented in a gamified way.
They have little experience of true learning and development. They learn what they’re fed, not what they think, inquire, and research by themselves.
What Authentic Engagement Looks Like
Real engagement starts with the day-to-day life of the child. Nothing to do with reading initially.
It’s about the child who wants to be involved in daily life, emotionally developed, full of self-esteem, and with an attitude that wants to be part of life.
Involve your child in daily life. Show them the importance of reading by doing it yourself.
Once a child experiences the wonder of investigating and discovering things about their world, they become wired to find out more and build their skills in all areas.
A confident child wants new experiences because their previous experiences have been positive and rewarding. They want to be asked and welcomed to join in with life, to try new things, to help.
Not a child who’s not allowed to touch things, not allowed to help in the kitchen, being shown repeatedly that parts of the world are off-limits because they’re too small, too inexperienced, not ready.
Books as Wonderful Experiences
Books become wonderful experiences or boring things kids have to do.
A child who is read to and experiences the wonder of dragons, witches, adventures, humour, and wonderful illustrations will want more. They see books as engaging, exciting things they can always access independently.
They don’t need an adult to say “yes, you can.” They can learn, practice independence, and have control over their environment, which is what all kids truly want.
When they see their parents reading and enjoying books, this immediately gives them a positive view of books and something they want.
A child rarely read to will find books confusing. They can’t read, so books immediately become difficult, something else they’re excluded from.
If they don’t see their parents enjoy books, reading holds little excitement. They see their parents on phones or watching TV. This becomes the behaviour they model.
The Path Forward
The earlier you can start giving your children a positive view of books, the better.
Reading to them from a young age builds vocabulary, a strong bond with you, focus, concentration, interest, and a gateway to everything. Different views, ideas, and strong messages.
The developing brain loves being read to. It loves enlarged vocabulary. It loves feeling safe and loved by their main caregivers.
Reading together is one of the most important factors of future success.
Model the behaviour. Show them you value books. Read to them, discuss stories and illustrations, make your own books together. Have books available. Go to the library to look and choose.
There are great screen-time activities, but make sure children have a strong love and respect for books before diving into random screen time.
At Kids Channel, we’ve developed learning programs that follow these principles – real content, calm presentation, and respect for children’s natural intelligence. Our phonics, reading, and educational series are designed to engage without overstimulating, helping children build genuine understanding of their world.
This is what thoughtful screen-based learning looks like: content that supports rather than replaces authentic learning experiences, programs that build skills systematically without artificial rewards, and materials that treat children as capable learners rather than entertainment consumers.
Cultivating True Readers
Literacy begins and is strongest with a full word bank. The more words a child knows, the better their brain will have developed. More talking, more investigating.
I have seen many children who can decode words but don’t enjoy reading, don’t want to read, and find it a chore rather than a wonderful skill and activity to embrace.
Follow the child. Introduce the concept of reading. Provide reading programs that systematically build needed skills. Research shows that Montessori children produce essays rated as significantly more creative and sophisticated, demonstrating the power of authentic learning approaches.
You’ll see when the child is ready for more. They will ask questions. They will try to sound out words. They will repeat letter sounds. They will want more reading.
Children who learn this way can digest books at will. They branch out and read books about space, animals, stories that interest them. They want to read, and with reading comes true autonomous learning.
Nothing is out of reach when it’s in a book.
The act of quietly settling down and reading offers so many extra benefits: emotional regulation, new information to digest and move on from, more understanding, more discussing, more being involved and interested and confident in the world they’re part of.
This is what we lose when we choose games over books. We lose readers who can think for themselves.
Author : I knew something was wrong almost from the beginning.
When studying and living Montessori both at home and in the workplace, it becomes apparent that a normalized child can pick up, assimilate, and use information very precisely. Offering them a “jazzified” way to learn something only clouds the aim of the teaching.
After 25+ years in Montessori education, I’ve watched this pattern repeat itself countless times. Parents bring me children who can technically decode words but treat reading like a chore to get over quickly. These are the game-taught children.
The Montessori child wants to understand. Once they have understood, they want to use that information in real life situations.
Gamified content might hold some superficial interest, but it introduces so much that is superfluous to the goal of reading. The child gets lost in the noise.