What if you never offered your kid an incentive or a punishment? What if every time you wanted your child to do something, you had a conversation about it? What might happen? The "parenting experts" claim it would be chaos. Kids would have no boundaries, which we're told that they need. Kids wouldn't know right from wrong, and they'd never make the correct choice.
Judaism has this concept, or pair of concepts, really. We believe that a person has a yetzer tov (a good inclination) and a yetzer hara (an evil inclination). All people have both, and therefore we are all prone to the pressures in the world which might make us choose good or evil. The Rabbis taught that we must find a way to fulfill our evil inclination, but that it should be channeled. The common example of this is that a violent man should become a butcher, which would help him to fulfill his yetzer hara without doing harm. A person who desires fame above all else should be encouraged to donate money to his community; the recognition he receives for his donations might fulfill his urge for fame while doing good.
I assert that we can appeal either to the yetzer hara or the yetzer tov, and that we should be appealing to the yetzer tov whenever possible. When soliciting money for a cause, the primary method should be pointing out the good in the world such a donation would create. Secondary to that should be the free tote bag.
When we teach our children, we might appeal to their yetzer tov by pointing out the good in what we are asking them to do. I'd like Henry, my 6 year old, to pick up his Legos because it makes it easier for everyone to walk through the room when the toys are clear. I'd like him to help a friend because it's the right thing to do, and makes us all feel good when we can help one another. He does not receive starts on a chart or a sticker for these acts, because that would be appealing to his yetzer hara. Furthermore, if I threaten him that I will take away the Legos, I am again activating the yetzer hara, by inviting him to fight with me.
I discussed this concept with a very nice Modern Orthodox rabbi recently, who felt that external rewards are the only way to get children "in the habit" of doing good acts. He had mentioned, in the course of our conversation, that he is a baal teshuvah, so I had to ask why he ever started putting on tefillin. Did someone offer him a prize? He pointed up, and said "that's where I get my reward". Having proven my point, he continued to insist that children need external rewards, such a small slips of paper signed by a rabbi, to encourage them to help a friend.
This very kind, thoughtful rabbi, having spent years in Jewish education, told me that he'd never heard these ideas, and they were quite radical to him. Thus, radical Jewish parenting.
What do you think? What works for you with your kids? How nervous does it make you to take the whole reward/consequence system out of the picture?
I've never done any rewards system with my own kids either. I figure that no one should be rewarded simply for doing the things they are supposed to be doing (picking up their clothes off the floor, clearing their plate after dinner, saying thank you, etc.) (I also couldn't be bothered with all the administrative nonsense that goes with a reward system -- charts and stars and points and all that stuff.) I'm a bit of an old-school relic, though, so don't think that my opinion is really typical of modern parenting.
ReplyDeleteHave you read Alfie Kohn's material? He makes a good case against rewards. Rewards and point systems are particularly damaging to neurotypical kids who often are struggling against their own biology when it comes to their moods and behaviors. In my own son's case he wanted to be good and he felt tremendous guilt and sorrow about when he was not. Helping him to overcome that guilt was part of the healing that had to occur as he moved on to overcome his illness.
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