What makes you get up and go to work and do your best each day? Is it the money? Is it the fear of getting fired? In other words, is it the reward/punishment system most managers rely on?

Probably not, says career analyst Daniel Pink, author of the book “Drive,” which delves into the science behind a strong work ethic.

“There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does,” Pink says in a TED talk on motivation. “The secret to high performance isn’t rewards and punishments, but that unseen intrinsic drive — the drive to do things for their own sake. The drive to do thing because they matter.”

It’s pretty much the opposite of what parents throughout the world have been teaching their children for decades: Do your chores, finish your homework, get good grades, work hard … and we’ll reward you with an allowance. But can monetary rewards instill a strong work ethic in our children?

In a 2012 article, the Wall Street Journal tackled this very question and asked Jon Gallo, co-founder of the family-focused financial advisory firm Gallo Consulting, to explain his views on allowance and work ethic.

“We want to avoid raising entitled children,” Gallo said. “But we also want our children to develop a work ethic, which is a sense of accountability and a drive to succeed.”

Instead of paying a child a set allowance for doing their regular chores — the types of things that contribute to the family and help keep the household running smoothly — Gallo suggested that parents pay for extra chores.

According to Gallo’s theory, doing regular “family chores” that are not connected to an allowance is a better motivator because “their reward is an internal sense of accomplishment that helps them develop a work ethic.”

To help children learn how to save and spend money, Gallo recommends that parents pay for extra chores and let the child decide if he or she wants to earn money after their regular work is done.

“Extra chores help teach the children to appreciate hard work and to understand that earning money involves work,” Gallo told the Wall Street Journal.

Having a set of regular, unpaid household chores is one way to instill a strong work ethic in our children, but helping a young human learn the value of a hard day’s work is more complicated than this. If you can’t use money as a motivator — as parenting experts have been teaching us for decades — what other methods can you use to teach your child the value of a hard day’s work? Here are a few suggestions:

Show them the way

Children learn from the actions of the adults in their lives. If you shun hard work and consistently take the easy way out — perhaps you pay a housekeeper to come in once a week and deep-clean the kitchen and bathroom instead of cleaning them yourself — your children are going to do the same thing. “Our kids pick up our attitudes [about work] whether we say them or not,” says educator Marie Hartwell-Walker in her essay, Teaching a Work Ethic. “Consider whether you yourself need an attitude transplant before you start working on your kids.”

Give them difficult tasks

It’s easy to forget that our children are not babies anymore, especially when you spent years taking care of their most basic needs and praying to the gods and goddesses that they wouldn’t fall down a flight of stairs or choke on a pea while your back was turned. But the tendency to protect our children — to be a helicopter parent who swoops in at the slightest sign of frustration — is detrimental to your child’s development of a strong work ethic. In fact, research shows that challenging your children builds pride in their work and strengthens their motivation to work even harder.

A series of experiments on human motivation, conducted by Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University, and his colleagues, backed the theory that the promise of money has little to do with developing a strong work ethic. In fact, one of the many things to come out of this study was this: The more difficult a job is, the higher our levels of pride at the end of the day and, thus, the more motivated we are to be productive.

Be positive and show appreciation

Ariely’s research into what motivates people at work uncovered other interesting information. For instance, people who get positive reinforcement during their workday — even something as simple as a smile and a nod — report increased performance. Also, people who felt ignored or unappreciated at work were more likely to want more money.

How can you implement these ideas at home? It’s pretty simple, really: Just acknowledge your child’s hard work and point out how helpful they’ve been. For example, if your son’s main chore is to feed and care for the pets, don’t take his work for granted. Acknowledge that the pets seem content and happy and thank him for his part in making the household run smoothly. Remember how good it feels when your boss or coworkers acknowledge your work and then spread that feeling in your own house. The result will be happier children (which means happier parents) and you can rest easy knowing that a few words of thanks are fortifying your child’s work ethic.