There is a conversation I have had with my mother many times since the birth of my first child four years ago. The basic outline goes like this.
I didn't have a lot of theories when I first started rewarding my son for his good behavior. The fact was, his birthday is in December--the same month as Christmas--and by late spring, I wanted to get the kid some new, age-appropriate toys. I thought it would be a bad precedent to set, if all he had to do was ask for them. So I started tying the acquisition of new playthings to his behavior. Voilà: My practice of rewarding his good behavior was born.
We've been chugging along like this for years now. He got M&Ms during potty training, plastic dinos after vaccinations. He gets new games for his Gameboy after good report cards and jaunts to the bookstore after a week's worth of saxophone practice. When school lets out, we take a vacation.
You can call it bribery. I call it, "Hey, kiddo, I'm proud--let's celebrate."
I know the arguments against what I'm doing. The kid will come to expect rewards for any little thing. He'll become an insufferable brat. His expectations of the real world will be unrealistic. He'll grow up and be unable to handle his adult life, all because a well-meaning adult (me) taught him that life rewards good behavior, jobs well done, hard work.
But, jeez, it's not as if he's been sequestered in a bubble the span of his formative years.
I don't know about you, but when I was a child, I was well aware of all the ways my small world was unjust. It wasn't fair that I got my glasses broken in dodgeball, or that the richer kids seemed to be the more popular ones. It seemed arbitrary that we had to ask to use the bathroom at school, or that we could only get two library books at a time. It seemed cosmically wrong that, while a bunch of us girls were talking during class, I was the one who had to sit out recess.
These days, they don't play dodgeball anymore (sorry, optometrists!) and you might get a note home from the teacher when some social situation goes awry. But, really, in the course of a childhood, hundreds of injustices are visited upon our kids. Small ones, we hope. Invisible to us, probably. But it happens to my kid, your kid, every kid. That's the way the world is.
What I don't understand is how we collectively got the idea that home is supposed to simulate the big, bad world. Why, again, are we supposed to try to mirror the reality that rewards aren't necessarily handed out equally, or at all? It seems to me that the goal of any home should be the opposite: to offer a respite from the daily grind of the world's uncertainty and injustice. I want my home to be the place where my son can expect unconditional support, where his efforts go rewarded, and where his biggest fan lives.
What I'm creating in our house, I suppose, is more like an ideal world. Here, there is compassion, in the form of making banana bread together when someone's had a rough day. In our house, if you've worked to the best of your abilities and accomplished a goal, you might get a new CD. If you do something kind, someone takes notice, and there might be a trip to the ice rink in your future.
In many ways, my rewards system is more realistic than expecting the boy to find his work rewarding in itself (remember learning the times tables?) or hoping that he can find a vein of altruism to mine. Because, as imperfect as the world is, most of us adults work for the reward of money. We're capitalists, after all. But I'm careful, in rewarding him, to give bonuses for effort, not his innate qualities like his handsomeness or athleticism. Besides, he can suss out what's subjective mama-love (you're so gorgeous!) and what's genuine pride in his accomplishments.
My son will someday be an adult in this dog-eat-dog world, and with any luck, he'll have a measure of power. He knows the great feeling of getting a reward. And he knows--because I've made it obvious--that I've gone to some effort to reward him when I get him a new gizmo or celebrate with a special outing. He's learning that grown-ups--whether they're parents, teachers, or bosses--have the power to reward. They should use it.
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