by Ali Ruschel
How many times have you offered your children a prize for good behavior, cleaning, or doing well in school? Are you offering your children a bribe or in all reality is this prize an incentive? The definition of incentive from dictionary.com is something that incites or tends to incite to action or greater effort, as a reward offered for increased productivity.
There are three different major types of incentives. Financial incentives are when an economic agent expects a material reward such as money or prizes in exchange for doing something in particular or acting in a particular way. Moral incentives are when people choose a particular action based on it being the right thing to do. In return the moral incentive would be self-esteem or approval from others. The third type of incentive is a coercive incentive. These incentives are when people expect a forceful action to be done to them or a family member if that person does something wrong.
Let’s look at grades and perfect attendance, two of the most important aspects of education. There are certain restaurants and movie theatres that offer free food or admission if a student can prove that they received good grades or had perfect attendance. Chuck E. Cheese offers free tokens to students who receive A’s and B’s and Blockbuster offers free movie rentals. Some car insurance companies offer a lower rate to the students who have achieved a certain grade point average. How can a parent be almost guaranteed that their child will be on the honor roll or that they will achieve perfect attendance? One idea would be to offer your child an incentive for the good grades. I have offered my children a dollar for each A that they receive and fifty cents for each B. If my children bring home straight A’s then they receive an additional bonus. Since I have started offering this incentive, none of my children have brought home anything lower than a B on their report cards. I have not personally offered anything for perfect attendance because my children strive to go to school every day anyway so offering an incentive would not be worth my time. Some of my other friends and our school district have offered prizes for students who have perfect attendance each nine weeks. My children’s friends have received money or video games for going to school every day of the school year. Our school district offers pizza parties or other fun activities for having perfect attendance in a nine week period.
Some parents offer their children money or gifts for weekly chores while some only offer stickers on a chart. I found in my personal experience that offering stickers for a daily amount of chores and then at the end of the week either offering money or a new toy seems to work best for my children. The kids seem to enjoy the fact that they receive stickers because it makes it look like they are accomplishing something. They also enjoy the money and praise that goes along with filling up the charts. There are other incentives that work well with chores and cleaning. A parent can say that the child will be able to have friends come over and spend the night if their room is clean but if it is not clean that there will be no visitors. Some parents can take their child out for a movie and dinner if they have a clean room and behave well.
Have you ever wondered why those candy bars and packs of chewing gum are located right beside the cash registers at Wal-Mart or grocery stores? I believe that they are there just to make children throw the largest temper tantrums ever. Most parents will give in and buy their child that Snickers or Three Musketeers against their own better judgment, just to avoid public humiliation. Other parents will warn their child in advance before going into the store. The warning can be simply, do not act up because no matter what you will not be getting a candy bar or toy. The parent can also use those candy bars or small toys as an incentive saying that if the child is good the entire time they are in the store the parent will buy them one of those desired candy bars.
So, do incentives really work or are they just tactless efforts that parents use to get a desired result? Some people say that incentives are teaching children that there will always be a prize for desirable behaviors. Of course there is a prize for desirable behavior all throughout life. The prize may not be in the form of money or toys but in the form of acceptance and respect. Some people believe that offering these “bribes” diminishes a child’s desire to want to do good things on their own. In my opinion incentives really do work. As a mother of four young boys I get more out of my children using incentives than I did before.
Sources:
http://parentingmethods.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_pros_and_cons_of_rewarding_children
www.dictionary.com
http://www.mychild.co.uk/articles/do-incentives-help-children-learn-1179
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incentive
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5 comments:
Wow, this post hit me on multiple levels... I’ll start my rant with the incentives for perfect attendance, which occurs in the business community as well as in the school districts. Who came up with this convoluted idea? These devoted few come to their job/school with total disregard for others, spreading disease which negatively impacts the work environment and ultimately costs the company more money in sick days and lost production…and in a larger percentage since that “dutiful and faithful, never missed a day in twenty years” employee has infected everyone around them; people with enough courtesy and common sense to stay home when they’re ill and contagious. Please, stay home and recuperate~ your fellow employees would probably be willing to toss in a couple bucks to buy you the lame lunch you won for your perfect attendance rather than suffer with your infectious germs! I know I would. Companies/employees as well as schools/parents definitely need to rethink this policy.
And you were right on target with the cruel marketing ploy of placing the candy, gum and trashy little toys (that don’t even make it home before they break) right at the checkout lines, nice and low to the ground, easily within the reach of children. I remember reading a Berenstain Bears book to our children about the greedy galloping gimmies that suggested the pre shopping trip bargaining that you mentioned. There is much that I miss now that my kids are older~those ugly scenes at the checkout aren’t one of them!
Incentives really do matter. I agree with this blog that the use of incentives can cause people, particularly younger children, to be productive. Incentives were used by my parents when I was younger to do my chores, homework, ect. Over time these traits were instilled into my lifestyle and now I do my homework and chores without being asked. I realize that in order to succeed, these are some of the things in which I need to do. With that said, I cannot fully credit incentives to all of my work habits, but it definitely greatly contributed.
-Ryan Slaby
I agree the author and that incentives do matter. Like the examples given in this example, my parents too provided me with incentives for good grades. From the rewards I received for getting good grade, I learned to take pride in my work and saw that all my hard work paid off. Now that I am older, I do not receive any incentives for getting good grades in my college classes. However, one thing that I have noticed that I do is that I give myself personal incentives. Such an example would be that if I finished, say a big project or assignment early, I can then reward myself by having a day off to relax. Therefore, I think that incentives are a good tool to utilize with children if they are done properly and the child can still see the importance of taking personal pride in their hard work, not use doing it for the rewards.
I agree the author and that incentives do matter. Like the examples given in this example, my parents too provided me with incentives for good grades. From the rewards I received for getting good grade, I learned to take pride in my work and saw that all my hard work paid off. Now that I am older, I do not receive any incentives for getting good grades in my college classes. However, one thing that I have noticed that I do is that I give myself personal incentives. Such an example would be that if I finished, say a big project or assignment early, I can then reward myself by having a day off to relax. Therefore, I think that incentives are a good tool to utilize with children if they are done properly and the child can still see the importance of taking personal pride in their hard work, not use doing it for the rewards.
- Amanda Kurtz
Yes, incentives do work. There is also negitive incentives like a child getting time out for misbehaving. These situations can be applied to economics.
When I was in first grade the teacher had a marble jar. There were lines marked on the jar and each line had some type of prize/incentive. Occasionally when the class did something good or was behaving, the teacher would put marbles in the jar. As the jar filled the value of the incentives increased. When the jar was full we recieved a class party. Even marbles in a jar can be applied to economics and incentives.
- Caitlin Koceski
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