Aaaaah! So, I've been thinking that it's wrong to pay your children to obey their parents and to get along with each other. Plus, I'm listening to the book Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, by Daniel H. Pink, and now I KNOW that it's counter-productive to PAY your children to obey their parents and to get along.
In fact, I've learned that paying your children to do anything suggests to them that the task is undesirable in some way, AND once they've been paid to do something, they are FAR more unlikely to ever do it again without pay.
I haven't finished the book yet, but I'm sufficiently worried about what damage I may have already done, and thoroughly confused about how to teach my kids to handle money, and about how you get paid for what you do, etc., without messing up their internal motivation for doing things.
Parenting is hard.
Family pic 2020
2 months ago
3 comments:
I get paid for the work I do....they might as well learn that now. There were some things my kids were expected to do...like keep their rooms cleaned and to pick up their things....I did not reward them for that...I didn't always have the money to give them...but the extra stuff they did...they earned privileges. You need to teach them the value of money and what it takes to get it. We all learn from trial and error. Hang in there! Love ya, Cindy
I agree with Cindy- we all work in one way or another for what we get and children need to learn that lesson early on!
Trying to pay your children to get along and to obey probably won't work very well (or for very long) because it doesn't provide the right kind of motivation to keep them going long-term. It's so much different when it has to do with relationships because it's not just a tangible job to be done. I don't think there was any harm in trying to pay them for it, though! (Anything is worth a try!!)
You're a great mom and your kids are a testament to that fact. They don't have to be perfect and neither do you!
I like Cindy's idea. I don't think we ever had money for allowances. I do remember Dad showing you kids the light bill, and challenging you to turn off lights when you left a room and that if the light bill was less the next month, we would go out to dinner, ALL of us with the money you saved. There might be a germ of an idea there.
I do think it's important for kids to learn that we work for everything we have, and as they are old enough to understand, they can benefit from learning what it costs to run a household.
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