RULE 32

Bribery doesn’t have to be bad

Boy, has bribery got a bad name with parents. It’s reckoned to be one of the worst things you can do. But hang on a minute – let’s define bribery first, shall we? Suppose your child is behaving appallingly and you tell them you’ll give them a tenner to shut up and behave. Well, OK – that, I grant you, is bribery. We won’t do that, obviously.

How about this one then? Your child is behaving perfectly at the moment but you suspect it may not last. Maybe you’re about to drag them off to the shops, or make them do their homework, tidy their room, eat their greens, turn off the TV, go to bed or do something else that generally elicits a bad response. You tell them you’ll reward them in some way if they continue to behave well. Do you reckon that’s bribery?

I don’t. And I’ll tell you why. When I used to work in big organizations, they were always telling me that if I coped with this responsibility I’d get promotion, or if I performed to a certain standard I’d get a bonus. I can’t see the difference. They didn’t call it bribery, mind you, they called it incentivization. And it was considered a Good Thing.

So let’s have none of this nonsense about not incentivizing children. So long as you do it before the bad behaviour starts, it’s a very sensible approach.

Of course, you want to be careful about the kind of incentives you give. If you always use money, you send out a depressing message to your kids about how the world works. Not to mention ending up skint. And you want the size of the incentive to match the size of the demand you’re making in response. Don’t buy them a whole new wardrobe to reward them for hanging up half a dozen items of clothing.

Ideally, you’ll make the reward fit the request. If they’re good all the time you’re at the shops, you’ll take them to the park afterwards. If they can get themselves out of bed in the morning without you having to pour a bucket of cold water over them, you’ll make their bedtime 15 minutes later. If they keep their room tidy for two months you’ll increase their clothing allowance.

And you haven’t forgotten the best reward of all, have you? Of course you haven’t. Your kids will do a hell of a lot for free if they know they’ll get your approval at the end of it. So you don’t have to concede a dozen incentives a day; most of the time they’ll be very happy to hear, ‘I’d be really pleased/impressed/happy if you’d …’. And make sure you remember to tell them afterwards how pleased/impressed/happy you are.