re: Discipline Mistakes Most Parents Make

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1. Bribing
To bribe a child into obeying is to motivate him wrongly. Bribing encourages children in selfishness, as their motive for obeying is personal gain. Bribing sounds like, "If you clean your room you can rent a movie tonight" or "If you don't misbehave in the grocery store, you can pick out candy at the check out counter. We should simply state the standard and follow through with consequences when that standard is violated.

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I certainly agree with the examples given, those are things kids should do, no need to bribe them to do it.


But I don't see any issue with a reward system if your kid goes above and beyond or puts together a nice little string of good days, if you will.

I think there's a gray area as well with things kids "should do" and trying to say they shouldn't be rewarded for simply doing them. For example, when we first moved to Texas, we now have a 2 story home, boys' upstairs, master downstairs. My kids are barely 4 years old, and one of them had some issues being so far away in a new house and upstairs. At this point, it's a "clean your room" type issue, this was a legit emotional kid not really knowing how to handle this new world. As parents, we live and we learn. After the 1st few sleepless nights, my kid would lose normal perks he had if he kept us up all night. This was a terrible idea on my part. After doing some reading on the internet, I got a much better understanding of how something think is so small and the kid just wants his parents, i had a better view o how this was a legit stressful situation that he just didn't know how to handle.

We made the switch to a reward system where every time he went a full night without coming down to wake us, he'd get a brand new $1 Hot Wheels cars, that's kind of his thing lol. It didn't take much time before we saw the improvement and eventual problem fixing itself. "Bribing" has a negative connotation, but I do think those are examples of where a reward system has a positive effect.

I use to get threatened all the time. "If you don't shut up, I will slap the shite out of you". It got me to shut up.