The unintended negative consequences of help in childhood

Exchanges of help in childhood produce many positive consequences: They increases academic success, promote happiness, and foster positive peer relations. For these reasons, caretakers encourage helping behavior early in life and schools implement intervention programs to nurture children’s prosociality. An often-overlooked issue, however, is that providing and receiving help do not always produce positive outcomes. We review the latest research that converges to suggest that when children receive, witness, or provide help, there can be unintended negative consequences—for example, receiving help can produce feelings of incompetence. The discussion of the paper grapples with how to balance the negative and positive outcomes of helping behavior, with an eye toward promoting children’s wellbeing and social cohesion in society.