10 Reasons to Stop Using Candy to Motivate Students

1) Candy increases the risk of tooth decay.
Frequent exposure to sugary foods increases the risk of cavities. Using candy as a reward can turn an occasional treat into a repeated part of a child’s school day.

2) Candy activates the brain’s reward system.
Sugary foods can trigger dopamine release, reinforcing the behavior associated with obtaining the reward. When candy is repeatedly tied to schoolwork, students may begin to focus more on earning the treat than on the satisfaction of learning itself.

3) Too much added sugar can work against overall health.
Diets high in added sugar are associated with weight gain, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. Using candy as a routine reward adds more sugar to children’s diets without providing the nutrients their growing bodies and brains need.

4) Children are already strongly drawn to sweet foods.
Children naturally prefer sweet tastes, and highly sugary foods can become especially rewarding and difficult to resist. Regularly using candy as a reward may strengthen their focus on sweets rather than helping them develop healthier eating patterns.

5) Candy does not provide the steady fuel that supports learning.
Candy provides a quick source of energy but little protein, fiber, or nutritional value. It is not the kind of sustained fuel that best supports attention, persistence, and learning.

6) Candy can crowd out more nutritious foods.
Foods high in added sugar often provide calories without the fiber, protein, vitamins, and minerals found in more nutrient-dense foods. When sweets become a regular part of the day, they can displace foods that better support growth and overall health.

7) Most children already consume plenty of added sugar.
Many children and adults already exceed recommended limits for added sugar. Students do not need schools adding more sugar to their day as a reward for learning.

8) Rewards can shift attention away from learning.
When the reward becomes the goal, students may focus on doing what is necessary to earn it rather than taking risks, exploring ideas, or choosing greater challenges.

9) Students may do the minimum needed to earn the reward.
When candy is the incentive, the goal can become completing the task as quickly or easily as possible. This may discourage persistence, deeper thinking, and the willingness to tackle more challenging work.

10) Candy rewards can weaken intrinsic motivation.
Expected tangible rewards can sometimes shift a student’s focus from curiosity, mastery, and accomplishment to the reward itself. Over time, students may become more likely to ask, “What do I get?” rather than engage in learning for its own value.

What Are Some Better Ways to Motivate Learners?

Candy may get a student to complete a task in the moment, but lasting motivation grows when learning feels engaging, meaningful, and achievable. Here are some more effective ways to encourage participation and persistence:

Make Learning Fun and Engaging – Use games, creative projects, humor, movement, challenges, and hands-on activities that make students want to participate.

Go Multisensory – Present information in different ways and give learners opportunities to see, hear, touch, move, discuss, and interact with what they are learning. A multisensory approach can make learning more engaging, memorable, and accessible.

Offer Meaningful Choices – Whenever possible, let students choose a topic, activity, order of tasks, materials, or way to demonstrate what they know. Having some control over the learning process can increase engagement and ownership.

Connect Learning to Interests and Purpose – Help students see how a skill relates to their interests, goals, or everyday lives. When learning feels relevant, students are more likely to invest effort and persist through challenges.

Create Opportunities for Success and Growth – Set achievable challenges and help students notice their progress. Success builds confidence, and confidence can make students more willing to tackle increasingly difficult tasks.

Give Specific and Sincere Feedback – Rather than offering general praise such as “Good job,” identify what the student did well: “You kept trying different strategies until you found one that worked.” Timely, specific feedback helps learners recognize the behaviors and strategies that contribute to success.

Use Privileges and Experiences When Incentives Are Needed – If a student still benefits from external motivation, consider choices, special responsibilities, extra game time, a preferred activity, or other meaningful privileges rather than candy.

Use Points or Tokens as a Bridge – For students who are accustomed to tangible rewards, a point or token system can provide structure while gradually shifting the focus toward privileges, progress, accomplishment, and greater independence.

The goal is not to eliminate every external reward. Some learners benefit from encouragement and incentives, particularly when a task is new, difficult, or requires significant effort. The key is to use these supports thoughtfully while creating a positive, playful, and multisensory learning environment where students feel capable, respected, and increasingly motivated by their own growth and success.

Continue Your Journey

Motivation is most powerful when learners begin to experience curiosity, competence, choice, and the satisfaction of making progress. Candy may encourage compliance in the moment, but it cannot replace the confidence and engagement that grow when students feel successful and connected to what they are learning.

By making learning more playful, multisensory, meaningful, and achievable, we can help students develop the skills and inner drive they need to approach challenges with greater confidence and persistence.

If you’d like additional support, explore these Good Sensory Learning resources:

• Educational Games – Make learning more engaging with playful activities that strengthen academic, cognitive, and executive functioning skills.
• Multisensory Lessons – Engage learners through lessons that combine visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic experiences to make learning more accessible, memorable, and enjoyable.
• Executive Functioning Games and Activities – Build working memory, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, planning, and other executive functioning skills through engaging, game-based learning.
• The Student Processing Inventory (SPI) – Discover the different ways learners process and interact with information and explore strategies for creating more personalized, multisensory learning experiences.

The goal is not simply to get students to complete the next task. It is to help them discover that learning itself can be engaging, rewarding, and worth the effort.