Rewarding good study habits does make more sense than rewarding grades. But I’m not convinced either is going to make a child more or less intellectually curious. Surely good teaching and/or exposing them to interesting things to learn has more effect?
ETA: Or a good school library.
I knew many even kids in decent colleges who still didn’t understand the steps, the habits, it took to get a good grade. A few bright kids didn’t learn until late because they got good grades with no need for consistency. Just crammed for the test a day.
And in eighth grade learning the habits and the learning are the goal. The grades usually follow but they are not the actual target (I think if nutrition/exercise habits and weight the same way btw).
10, 20 bucks an A? To put in hard work every day? For a whole grading period. That’s like one lunch out with friends. It wouldn’t have motivated me. Probably would have made me less interested. I could make lots more with a part time jobs and it invites the comparison. On an hourly rate it is bupkiss.
Yes good teachers. And parents who model intellectual curiosity and ask about what they are learning.
I suppose homeschooling would be the best way not to kill that curiosity, but who has time?
I’m not planning to pay my daughter to get good results in school (we don’t really have grades) but the privileges and treats ideas sound reasonable.
I did specify good teachers. Realistically few (definitely some though) parents are very good full time teachers. Many would that curiosity. I know neither my wife or I would have been great full time teachers of our kids. I think that is harder than teaching a class of strangers! Engaging with them about what they are being taught and being the role model is something though most of us can do, whatever our own academic accomplishments.
Really? I always thought controlling the class would be the hardest part of teaching, and precious little learning will be happening if you fail. Plus with just a couple of kids they can go at their own pace, which avoids making learning dull. Still, you’re right that not everyone makes a good teacher.
That’s one of the hardest parts of parenting! How can I model good study habits when I never learned them myself? 
I don’t want to pass on all my faults, but you can’t model a better way unless you can do it consistently.
I wish, wish libraries were relevant in this time.
It was my first independent happy place.
My favorite thing to do in the library was look around at all tomes, books and magazines and try to figure out just how many pages had never been read. And the adventures no one ever read.
I loved reading and looking up words in the giant dictionary on a pedestal.
I love the still air in a library.
I love the smell.
I went to the library at school. I actually was a library aide.
I loved the library in town.
I thought at age 12 or 13, I was so grown up going there. I made friends with the librarian. Mrs. Washington.
I volunteered as an adult in libraries where ever I’ve lived.
But I’m afraid the computer age has pushed libraries down a notch or two.
It’s a giant loss to humanity.
yeah, I wouldn’t love that either if a teacher said that to my kid. I provide for my children because I love them, and it’s not transactional based on their performance in school. I mean, I want and expect them to try hard at school, but I certainly would not want them to think their meals, clothes, and home were at risk if they performed poorly or got a bad grade. That seems to be too much pressure for a second grader.
I’m not referring to modeling good study habits. For that we provide the structure that facilitates them, whether we explicitly reward it or not. I’m talking about modeling intellectual curiosity. Being interested in learning things ourselves. Asking and enjoying being asked good questions and trying to find the answers with our kids. How do we know this? Why do we believe this? Encouraging them to follow their curiosity even if it won’t be on the test or impact the grade.
That’s very easy to do. People think it’s hard to do.
I get it, if you’ve worked all day. Had to cook dinner.
Put the casserole on timed cook and take the kiddo outdoors. One leaf or flower will occupy 30min. The questions last a lifetime.
I’ve done this many times with my kids and grandkids.
When kids are elementary age their curiosity expands.
You’re looking for questions and observations.
Hmm – I feel like comparing school to a career-type job is not quite right. It’s more like, in our family we have various expectations and internal duties/tasks. And the expectation that the kid will go to school and check enough boxes to make good grades, if it’s easy for them (*), is one of them, like the expectation that someone in the house will make dinner every night, or that things will get cleaned up after dinner, or that someone will take the the kids to/from extracurriculars that they really want to do. No one gets paid for any of those things in our house, and I don’t think they should, as what I really don’t want is for my kids to get a mentality that everything is transactional, which is… not a good mentality to have when you start having other relationships. (The way that my husband’s family did it, which I think is reasonable, is that if their kids started taking on more than the base-level responsbilities – like mowing their enormous yard – then they did get paid a little extra for that.) And, like… if my kids don’t get an A, I’m not going to stop making them dinner, and last week when I was coming down with a cold and came home and was like “kids, you will have to fend for yourselves tonight, I’m taking a nap,” that doesn’t mean they’re going to stop working at school.
(*) This seems to be pretty easy for my kids. However, on the rare occasions where it hasn’t been, I keep tellign them that the grade is an indicator. If they make a “bad grade” on something, that’s a sign that they aren’t learning the thing (or, sometimes, that they haven’t figured out what the teacher wants, which – is also a useful skill to develop), so then the focus is on figuring it out. Their primary job is to master the material, which my kids can usually do aside from the check-boxes.
So yeah, I’m not paying my kids. But I guess if other people want to, then that’s their lookout.
On the other hand, the thing that I really disagree with is bribing kids for stuff that’s mostly out of their control – my daughter has a friend whose parents told her they’d buy her a cell phone if she got in to the selective magnet school she was applying for. Now, the application is a little in her control, but it comes down a lot more to who else is applying as well as the vagaries of the application process, what they’re looking for, etc. (I know kids who did not get in to this school that I was expecting to get in, and kids who got in that I was not expecting to get in.) She did end up getting in, but ugh! Talk about inappropriately pressuring a kid! And the kicker is that she wanted to get in anyway, so I think she would have done a good job on her application regardless.
To be honest I’m more concerned about kids thinking their parents love them more or less based on what rewards they give for letter grades. I cited an article upthread saying, in the author’s experience, the vast majority of middle/high school students (80+%) see their own grades as affecting how much their parents love them.
Most jobs pay you for adequate work, with raises/bonuses for exceptional performance. By analogy that would be like a kid earning allowance for passing classes (C average), and getting a raise each year for particularly good grades. It is not equivalent to the OP’s daughter, who conditions any and all payment on straight-A’s. The arrangement in the OP is more like freelance/contract work, except it’s the exploitative kind where the worker has no discretion in turning down jobs, and there is no payment up-front.
~Max
In the general case, it is not a given that straight-A’s correspond to hard work. But also, that is literally a bribe:
Something offered to induce another to do something: tried to use dessert as a bribe to get the child to cooperate.
~Max
Aw. Yes, I spent so much time in the various school libraries. I remember reading a bunch of kid’s versions of Greek myths and fairy stories and tales of selkies and things at primary school. More sci-fi and random young adult books at secondary school. My mum got us books from the mobile library that came to the village every few weeks, and later took us to the big library in town. I read a lot of popular science books from there, too.
But you’re right. There are so many more distractions at our fingertips now, it’s harder to sit down and focus on a book. I want my daughter to love reading like I did, but it’s going to be much harder to encourage it.
Hmm, I hadn’t really thought this needed to be modelled. Aren’t kids naturally extremely curious? She’s been pretty keen to learn new things so far. I’ll have to think about how to do it.
Parents and teachers react to questions in various ways.
To share one story - science class many years ago. Teacher said heat is invisible. I asked then why do I see wavy over the pavement on hot days. Teacher stopped and said he didn’t know and would come back with an answer instead of treating me like a smart ass. Next day he had the answer. I fell in love with science that day.
That’s a ludicrous definition of bribe. By this definition literally all payments are bribes. My employer bribes me to work for them. I bribe the store to provide me with goods. I bribe the local nature conservation society to protect wildlife. I bribe the waiter at a restaurant. I bribe the guy who delivers my food. That’s simply not what the word means or how it’s used.
That’s great.
I do know the answer, but I don’t know how to explain it in an age-appropriate way. I’m afraid of boring my daughter by going on about something that doesn’t make sense to her. My parents bought me books that explained stuff like what causes mirages in a way geared to kids; I guess I should give her some of those when she’s a bit older.
I took that definition straight out of my dictionary, American Heritage, entry two. It’s perfectly normal in my experience to speak of “bribing” children, friends, coworkers, without implying any sort of corrupt purpose.
Compare Miriam Webster:
: something that serves to induce or influence
offered the kid a bribe to finish his homework
Or the example for bribing (transitive verb):
bribing a child with candy
A normal purchase is hardly a bribe, though. It’s simply expected, not influencing or inducing something.
~Max
It’s literally a reward:
a thing given in recognition of one’s service, effort, or achievement.
Bribing is promising candy so the kid will shut up screaming at the restaurant.
Reward is a gift for a job well done
I overheard a high school student complaining that he should get paid to go to school. I wanted to say (in hindsight, after I’d had time to think about it) something like “People don’t get paid to go to school for the same reason people don’t get paid to go to the gym and work out. It’s something you do because it’s supposed to benefit you.”
Should kids be paid for doing other things they don’t want to do but that are for their own good, like, say, going to the doctor or dentist?