The pre-k economy
I am a reluctant capitalist. In the movie, Wall Street, Gordon Gekko says, ” The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed — for lack of a better word — is good.” Back when I first saw the movie, that line made me cheer. Now that I’m a little wiser, it gives me the chills.
Now I’m a parent. And part of the deal with being a parent is that you’ve got this, uh, responsibility to teach your kids stuff. Actually, that’s not quite right. Kids learn stuff in spite of what their parents do or say, so the parental responsibility is to actually think about what they’re teaching their kids. As always, actions speak louder than words.
All that is just a lead-in to my unease with how well the reward system works in our house. We’ve got a preschooler who loves doing well and, like most of us, enjoys being rewarded for good work. So we bought a box of 100 standard poker chips and we dole them out relatively liberally. Picked up your toys without being asked? “Nice work! Go ahead and toss a couple of chips in your chip jar.” When the “chip jar” accumulates 25 chips, it merits a trip to the local dollar store for one item of his choice. Which usually amounts to a new dinosaur or something.
The rewards diminish with the frequency of action. If he picks up his toys without being asked, then the first few times he’ll get mucho chips. But as the toy pickup habit becomes ingrained, the rewards slide. My theory is that this will cause him to innovate new rewardable actions, while still keeping the newly established habits.
I have some concern with the system. For instance, I don’t want him to think that he is owed a reward for every good thing he does. (or every “good thing” he invents: “Hey dad, I decided not to hit my brother. How many chips can I get?”) Most good deeds are their own reward. I’m hoping this gets through with the diminishing reward trick. Also, we’re pretty arbitrary when doling out chips. Picking up a whole mess of toys might score only one or two chips, but wiping a couple of pee-drips (oh yes, I did just say “pee-drips.”) off the toilet seat will score a windfall. Generally nothing merits more than five chips. Although, the other day I totally negotiated with him on something and he squeezed 12 chips out of me! [Full story: we were at an outdoor party and a friend started chasing our son. Started out fine, but then the son tripped and got hurt and immediately the fun guy who was chasing him was transformed into a demon. I really wanted our son to go over and talk to the guy (who was feeling awful about the whole thing) and let him know everything was cool. I told him I’d give him a couple of chips for it, but he wanted 20. I went down to five and he went to 12 and wouldn’t budge. So 12 it was. He talked to the guy, gave him a high five and everything was cool.]
So you probably see my dilemma. The reward system works really well, but I don’t want to turn my kid someone who expects rewards for everything he does. I also don’t want him to start getting all greedy with it (though this hasn’t shown up yet). The only thing that really gives me much comfort is that I’m convinced that we’re not passive parents. We’re constantly evaluating how our kids are doing, what we’re doing, whether what we’re doing is good, whether it’s both good and effective, etc. And we’re always talking to the kids. Letting them know how much we love them and what our expectations are.
So there it is. Our little micro-economy for micro-people. Use at your own risk.
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14 opinions for The pre-k economy
rob
Sep 16, 2005 at 9:13 am
i love your site and read it often, so i offer these comments not as a critique but as a suggestion. rewards-based parenting may work in the short term, but i (and many progressive educators) feel that it is very important for children to learn at a very early age that some tasks need to be completed without the promise of a reward. in many progressive classrooms (especially pre-k) the children have to perform “have to” jobs, small tasks that help keep the classroom neat or get it prepared for the next day. i’ve seen that after time the children learn to love helping and contributing and the reward that they recieve is the respect of their peers. again, just a suggestion. good luck!
Kyle
Sep 16, 2005 at 11:34 am
I have a small daughter myself (nearly two years old), and the same concept of positive reinforcement vs. bribing worries me. The concept of diminishing rewards mitigates that, though, and so does rewarding for positive actions — that is, things he did rather than things he didn’t do.
My daughter is fortunately young enough that we’re able to teach her to do all sorts of things just because. Not that we only love her when she does good things, but it’s exciting for her to feel like she’s doing things just like a big person and to see us give her a big smile and hug when she does things like put my socks in the dirty clothes hamper (it would be easier to do it myself, actually, but…) or gives the remote control back to Mommy or Poppy.
Raj Mandalia
Sep 16, 2005 at 12:47 pm
We have a 10yr. old and a 4 yr. old. Most of this post relates to the 10yr. old since the 4yr. is just now understanding the concept of “money”.
Some time ago, I attended a seminar where the speaker talked about a ’system’ he had developed on his own and uses in his house. Here is the system, as we are using it, we modified \ extended it by adding the “have to” part.
Basically, you co-develop (the parents and the kids together, so that there is by-in) a menu of work items, some are “have to” items while other items are “paid items”. But there is a third menu, a “pay for” list which details what the child pays you for certain tasks, most of these tasks being also on the child’s “have to list”. So they can earn 25c for taking the trash out but they have to make their bed. If they don’t, and you make their bed, it will cost them $1.25! The parent’s charges are much higer than the childs.
Also, the speaker suggested settling in cash at the end of each day. Nothing like bringing the money to the table!
So now you are teaching the child that there are things they have to do, things they can do to make money, siblings can compete for tasks, and that it costs money to have things done for you \ there is a consequence to not doing something by a certain time. And by paying in cash, they learn basic accounting, and how to physically take care of their money.
This is getting to be a long comment, but bear with me a little longer please.
Also, now that my 10yr. old is “making money” we give her a greater degree of freedom regarding how she spends it - its her money after all. Therefore visits to the mall have improved substantially. Whereas earlier, it would be “I want this, I want that” now I see her examining items, **looking at the price tags and on-sale items**, and carefully making up her mind how she spends her money. A lot of times, we see that she really wants something but then works out how that translates into work for her, and decides to put the thing down and walk out of the store! (She’ll proably later get a treat in the food court for that but we don’t tell her that its a reward).
Also, she has begun to develop bargining skills and understands rudimentaries of supply-and-demand. For instance, she charges an-arm-and-a-leg to play video games with the 4yr. old since she know how much daddy hates to do it.
So what do you think? Good, bad, neither? Any suggestion to furthur refine this? BTW, “Capitate Your Kids” by John E Witcomb, excellent book. http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=rajmandalia&sort=unique (I read your Library Thing post too ;-))
chuck
Sep 16, 2005 at 1:25 pm
Interesting post Slacker. I am not lucky enough yet to have a child so I read your article and compared it to how I treat my dog. I used the same type system.
Dog does something that I consider good, I give the dog a reward.
Now, there is a kink in my system. The dog is an intelligent dog and got around the system. Somehow he worked his way to where we have the rewards (Science Diet Milky Bones) and begs for the reward. Someone gave him a reward simply because he asked for it!!! So, now we are stuck in that loop. He asks for reward, we give. Way bad!! That just tells me that if we had a kid at this point, we’d be in a lot of trouble.
Hopefully no one out there is stuck in this dilemma. We’re slowly working him out of it - but he still follows us to the local rewarding area (our kitchen pantry) and expects the reward. He’s slowly learning that its no longer happening.
Good luck..
Chuck
Rustin Jessen
Sep 16, 2005 at 1:32 pm
The pre-k economy
Im not a parent, nor do I plan on being one anytime soon. But I read this and really liked it.
I thought I would share:
Slacker Manager: The pre-k economy
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/3197804
…
Aj
Sep 16, 2005 at 2:38 pm
I don’t suppose you pay your supervises for wiping pee-drips from the toilet seat: that could make for some interesting staff evals. :)
Brian Yamabe
Sep 16, 2005 at 2:48 pm
Sounds like you need to read, Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn. Havent’s gotten to it yet, but it’s on my reading list.
Second, you seem to have some misconception of capitalism. What does your reward system have to do with captialism? Unless your child is free to acquire chips from other parents, or you are soliciting bids for other children to come in and clean-up :), you’re not running a free-market.
anon
Sep 16, 2005 at 7:05 pm
You know, Brian has a point about your concept of capitalism. that aside, when my children were little I tried to instill in them that we were in this together and that the reward was being a happy family. Yeah, it didn’t work. I had a messy house that I had to clean and I never touched their rooms. I just closed the door. But, they turned out okay (all university grads, one lawyer, all susccessful). So, what counts? We had fun and they actually hang up their clothes now.
Bren
Sep 16, 2005 at 10:22 pm
Great (long) commment, Raj. What you’ve described is really interesting and I’ll be picking up that book!
Brian, I haven’t read Kohn’s book either, but like you I’ve heard of it and read reviews. Thanks for the reminder. I’m sure I’d even agree with some of it. I should note that, on the whole, this idea of exchanging services for chips is pretty low-key around our house. It’s definitely not the first resort. Rather it helps provide a little extra push for getting the most onerous things done. We actually go days without talking about chips, but it does come in handy. There’s gotta be balance.
As for the capitalism question, I’m not sure my understanding of it is flawed, though I agree the post doesn’t do justice to any definition of capitalism that I’ve ever read. So, yeah, I’m using a simplistic view. No free market here, obviously. Just the idea of exchanging goods and services, and the idea that the profit motive can lead to greed. It’s only the second idea that concerns. Greed isn’t a value that I want to instill in my kids. Which brings me back to balance–I’m not interested in “bribing” the kids to do good deeds. I’m fortunate that, the oldest at least, has a nice internal motivation to be a good kid and please his parents.
Sounds like some folks read the post to say that our house couldn’t operate without poker chips. Far from it. We do pretty well without them most days. But you know, if the oldest kid wakes up and gets dressed all by himself, he may get a chip or two.
Steve Duncan
Sep 17, 2005 at 5:22 am
Aw geeze - all those poker-chip spam comments I deleted, and I NEVER ONCE thought of starting a poker chip company!
Stupid, stupid stupid!
Sam D.
Sep 18, 2005 at 8:52 pm
My wfie and I adopted a Russian orphan who has Reactive Attachement Disorder. Among other things, RAD is characterized by a lack of cause-and-effect thinking, poor impluse control, and an extreme need to control his environment. So, my wife and I always carry a roll of Smarties, which we use to reward good behavior and indirectly punish poor choices. If he does something noticeably good, he gets a Smartie. If he does something bad, everyone in the area *except him* gets a Smartie. The latter works surprisingly well, apparently due to jealousy.
For example, he and his sister may be playing and he abruptly throws a toy across the room. My wife declares, “Here’s a Smartie for everyone who didn’t throw their toys.” This works even though we never reward them for playing well together. Since starting this program, his behavior has improved tremendously. His first year with us, we couldn’t find a sitter able to control him, now we just give her a roll of Smarties and tell her to find a reason to dispense them every half-hour or so.
I’m going to track down the book mentioned by another commentor, “Punished by Rewards” and see what it has to say.
EM Sky
Sep 19, 2005 at 10:33 am
Obviously this is a popular topic - if the number of comments posted here is any indication! I do think that rewards can get out of hand. Alfie Kohn’s work has come up on my “radar screen” before, and I think his ideas are definitely worth reading/exporing. But the good news regarding this particular concern - about rewards leading to greed - is that I don’t think this is likely to happen as long as the reward system doesn’t become the child’s primary source of excitement and “approval.”
People are neurologically primed to get excited about all kinds of “discovering” and “obtaining” activities. Dr. Jaak Panksepp calls this the “SEEKING” drive (see his book “Affective Neuroscience”). But this SEEKING drive can be harnessed in a lot of different directions. Harness it into SEEKING financial rewards, and yes it can become greed. But harness it into SEEKING new skills, new ideas, new forms of self-expression and it can become the foundation for life-long learning.
To read more, see my article “What is ‘greed’?” - posted on Win-Win Web - in response to this article - at http://emsky.typepad.com/winwinweb/2005/09/what_is_greed.html .
NIF
Sep 19, 2005 at 5:22 pm
ARGH!
Today’s dose of NIF - News, Interesting & Funny … Talk Like a Pirate Day edition, ARGH!
sutton
Oct 11, 2005 at 12:44 pm
On a slightly different but ultimately related topic, you HAVE TO HAVE TO HAVE TO read “The First Bank of Dad,” by David Owen. I picked it up in the library thinking it looked interesting and found myself reading half of it right there at the new releases shelf. I think the guy has some brilliant ideas, and though I haven’t had kids yet myself I’ve spent a lot of time learning/thinking about child psychology (almost became a teacher…), and a lot of what he says makes such perfect sense that I’m astounded such practices aren’t more widespread…
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743204808/102-3899124-9375359?v=glance&n=283155&v=glance