How many times have you found yourself in a situation where your child wasn’t cooperating and you promised something to encourage his cooperation, but it didn’t make a bit of difference? Many parents confuse bribery with rewards. Let’s take a moment to understand the difference between the two and how both influence behavior.
A reward is earned as a direct result of something you have done. Bribery is something that is given to someone before a desired action is performed. For example, taking your child to eat ice cream after he has finished his homework is a reward. In contrast, giving ice cream to a child so he’ll cooperate and do his homework after having the ice cream is bribery.
Some parents argue that they don’t see a problem with this technique as long as the bribery gets the desired behavior. Let’s dig deeper and understand the influence both bribery and reward have on behavior.
Our behavior is influenced by the immediate consequences of the behavior. If the consequence is desirable, the behavior will likely be reinforced and repeated in the future under the same conditions. Let’s look at how your action reinforces the desired or undesired behavior. In the situation where ice cream is given after the homework is finished, the immediate consequence of getting a reward after finishing the task is reinforcing the behavior of homework completion. On the other hand, when ice cream is given to a child when he has refused to cooperate, your child is learning that he receives his desired consequence from not cooperating. Basically, the bribery reinforces the refusal.
It’s possible that bribery has worked for you on occasion, but if your goal is to help your child develop appropriate skills, please be aware of the long-term influence of bribery. Choosing to use rewards might be more difficult from a parenting perspective, but only by reinforcing desired behavior can you help your child achieve his goals. You will be helping your child develop the new and lifelong habit of working hard to reach his goals.
How the differences between bribery and rewards applies to using Habitz.
I’ve heard from some parents that they’re worried that using an app like Habitz is similar to bribing their kids to do thing things they’re already supposed to be doing. Based on the definitions above, it’s clear that when parents use Habitz to set goals for their kids, and the kids complete their goals, they’re being rewarded from within the app, not being bribed by it. With Habitz, the behaviors that are being reinforced are the positive ones.
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Victoria Tenenbaum is a certified Behavior Analyst, BCaBA. She holds a bachelor’s degree in education from Tel Aviv University and currently working toward master’s degree in applied behavior analysis. Victoria specializes in training parents to address children’s problem behaviors by implementing a scientific approach to correcting a child’s sleep or behavior problems. Victoria is a mother of 2 very active boys and is a pediatric behavior consultant for Habitz. www.victoriatenenbaum.com |