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 ...
Get The Rules of Parenting, 2nd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
