Bribery and Children

As a parent, when your child is having a meltdown, or doing something bad, or just being uncooperative, you may be tempted to use a bribe to get them to behave how you would like for them to. However, this isn’t a good path to start down, since your child will then learn to manipulate you to their advantage.

Being given something to keep a child from doing something whilst they are doing this thing actually reinforces the bad behavior, since what you are really communicating to him is that he does x, you give y, and he stops doing x. This is bribery.

This may be confusing, since we also know that when you reward good behavior, this encourages the good behavior to continue. So of course, the big question is “what is the difference between rewarding good behavior and bribing?”

The big thing that differentiates between a reward for good behavior and a bribe is all in the timing. A bribe generally “…occurs under duress—right smack in the middle of a situation in which your child has seemingly sprouted horns and a tail” (Schlicher). Let’s say your child is just being a brat at the grocery store, running around and generally exhibiting bad behavior. If you tell her that if she behaves then she’ll get a candy bar, in this situation, that’s a bribe. You have caved under the stress of have an unruly child in the store in the moment and offered a bribe.

Let’s say that before you went to the store, you told your child “if we behave in the grocery store, we might have enough time after to go get ice cream!” In this case, that is offering a reward for good behavior. She knows before she decides to become unruly that she will get a reward from behaving. It is then her decision whether she’ll abide by the terms of the agreement, or to be a brat.

Offering the reward ahead of time is what differentiates between a bribe and rewarding good behavior. Oftentimes we’ll see a child start having a breakdown at the store, throwing a tantrum, after their parent has told them they couldn’t have something. It is very likely that those parents previously caved multiple times and bribed their children into behaving well. In her article titled “What’s So Bad About Bribing Your Child?” (linked in references) Laura Markham explains it very well: “if you offer your child a "reward" for stopping "bad" behavior, you're actually training him to misbehave in order to get future rewards.”

Something else to keep in mind with offering rewards that is also very important is to still be careful of your timing. If you always offer the reward ahead of time, it can very quickly turn into bribery. To better reinforce good behavior, try offering something after the fact. If your child behaves at the store, or helps you out with a project without complaint, maybe afterwards offer something. Something like “You were really good at the store! Do you want to stop for some chicken nuggets on the way home?” This suggests to their mind that when we do good things, sometimes we get things afterwards. However, because you offered it after, it also allows them to experience the authentic rewards of something, like the joy that comes when we are nice to somebody, simply for the sake of being nice. It doesn’t take the genuinity out of an action or behavior.

That’s another thing to be careful of when offering rewards. Don’t make the reward bigger than the action. When you make a reward bigger than the action, it is likely your child’s mind, especially in younger children, will link their action to the external reward, rather than to the actual reward of something. The bigger the reward, the closer it becomes to a bribe. A smaller reward is harder for their brain to link to the reason for their behavior, like getting an ice cream cone after raking the mountain leaves in the yard of a neighbor. It is rather out of the goodness of their heart that they do this action, and not the small external reward that the ice cream offers. By using smaller rewards, you recognize and appreciate the effort and kindness of the child, but you don’t over-do it and make them uncomfortable, or give them the expectation that this is how it will be every time they do something like that.

Next time you think about bribing your child at the store just to get them to behave, consider how it may turn out down the line. Do you want to be manipulated down the line, or would you rather just have a not-so-good time at the store? I personally would choose to have a rough time at the store in this instant than to have my child always expect something from me whenever we go do anything.

References

Markham, L. (2017, July 19). What's So Bad About Bribing Your Child? Psychology Today.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/peaceful-parents-happy-kids/201707/whats-so-bad-about-bribing-your-child.

Images from Google Images

Schlicher, E. (n.d.) Bribing Kids vs. Rewarding Kids for Good Behavior: What’s the Difference?

Empowering Parents. https://www.empoweringparents.com/article/bribing-kids-vs-rewarding-kids-for-good-behavior-whats-the-difference/.