Page 79 - The Intentional Parent

Chapter Seven Rewarding Behavior
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should behave without any reward but the knowledge they have done the right thing.” Similarly, when I was in professional school for psychology some thirty plus years ago, we were taught that people who perceived rewards as bribes should consider what happens every Friday when they are paid for the work they do. Was that a bribe? Now that I am an all grown up psychologist I don’t have to listen to everything I was taught in school, and I can still take exception to the parent who tells me they won’t bribe their children. Here are the reasons, in short form:
First, reinforcing a child’s behavior is not a bribe, because a bribe helps people achieve something that is usually underhanded and immoral. A bribe is an incentive for people to perform bad behaviors for self serving reasons. It is meant to incentivize people to overcome their resistance to doing things they should not do. I can’t think of a single appropriate comparison to the behavior between a parent and a child unless a parent offers their child a lollipop if they would steal a car for them.
Second, when people go to work, there is (or should be) a pre- existing and perfectly understood relationship between work and pay. It is not a bribe, once again, for the reasons I mention in the previous paragraphs. Lack of work provides more of an incentive for your boss to punish you by firing you or threatening to fire you. Punishment is the “opposite” of reward. Punishment would be meant to decrease your slacker behavior at work. I suppose you
was once giving a lecture, talking about the importance of rewarding good behavior when a parent jumped up and said, “I refuse to bribe my child to behave in ways they
The Intentional Parent by Peter J. Favaro, Ph.D. 79