Parenting Pearl #3: "Bribery works."

To be clear, I'm not referring to negotiating or offering choices here. For those of you "of a certain age," as the French would say, this is along the lines of the old game show, "Let's Make A Deal." In fact, today I overheard a parent say to one of her children, "I'll make a deal with you." Usually dealing--or it's less savory referent, bribery--is first used as a last resort. You have tried all the 'good' parenting techniques you have but alas, your darling child(ren) is not responding. The problem here, I learned over the years, is that while you have read the parenting books and consulted the experts, your children haven't. They're operating off what their reflexes tell them. And for the most part, very few of us, adults included, are agreeable to not getting our own way. So, parenting back against the wall, you bribe. "If you come with Mommy, I'll get you a popsicle." "Give Daddy the book and we can play with your toys." Over the years, I've heard this referred to as the When...Then Rule or Grandma's Rule. When your child does X, then they will be rewarded with Y. Often it works. Anything that works tends to become part of your parenting repertoire. There are a couple problems here. Sometimes X is not a behavior that is out of the ordinary. It's a behavior you'd like to see your child do regularly, routinely--and without making a deal. (Sorry, Monty Hall). Short term behaviors can lead to long term behaviors. Just think about having a teenager who is accustomed to working the system in order to get his/her own way. But I do hear many parents say they use dealing because of its effectiveness. On a personal note, my son, Tom, has said that he would prefer I not write about his transgressions as a child on this blog. Heretofore, he has asked to be referred to as Toby.

Bribery does work. Fact of the matter is, it works on almost everyone, of almost every age, almost everywhere. People work hard at their jobs to earn a bonus. Kids behave in school to earn prizes, rewards, tokens, or points. Here's my take: I'm not so sure it's a bad thing that we're teaching kids to understand (at a rudimentary level at first, then in more complex ways as they get older) and appreciate the workings of an incentive plan. They're going to confront this thousands, maybe even millions, of times throughout their lives. Maybe there's even a piece of the incentive plan that helps kids (again, after a certain age) to learn about goal-setting and reward. Obviously, I ultimately want my child to learn to set goals according to his own priorities, then to feel an internal motivation to achieve them and the satisfaction of knowing that pride in his accomplishments is reward enough. But let's get real. He's not even two. For now, I think maybe setting a very small and achievable goal for him according to my priorities ("Sit down in your high chair and eat your broccoli so you can have some dessert."), then providing him the external motivation ("Mmmm, aren't those little trees yummy?"), and the subsequent reward ("Yay! You ate one-tenth of a gram of broccoli! How about half a cookie!") is maybe, maybe, hopefully setting him up to one day understand how goal-setting and goal-achieving works. And right now, that often times happens through bribery.

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