I’m curious how you all would feel about introducing gambling, in some sense, with children. Like a large fishbowl filled with slips of paper. Whenever they do something good, you let them go get a slip and receive whatever reward is written on it. Obviously you’d have to deal with cheating.
Although I’m weary about punish or rewarding doing chores as opposed to good effort. I feel like chores should just be expected of the child. Instead of it seeming like a job. But I suppose the randomness is supposed to help with that.
Odd as it may sound, it would have to be “structured randomness” so to speak.
Picking a slip out of a bowl would probably work—getting a reward only when the parent is in the mood to give one would likely not. The latter is just as random from the child’s perspective, but inconsistent parenting (or animal training, or employee rewarding schemes) is known to be bad at shaping behaviour in the desired fashion.
That’s true. Arbitrary responses can lead to learned helplessness, although that’s for negative responses. I can imagine there is are more relevant psychological concepts.
I felt a bit uneasy with that as well. Does this sort of behaviour encourage gambling-like activities? Is an adult raised with the gambling reward more likely to walk into a casino and risk his family’s nest egg? Though, in the best case, the child grows up learning how to identify positive habits and trick himself into doing them (e.g. with the fishbowl of rewards).
Also, your comment on how these jobs should be “just expected” reminds me of sports contracts. A stand-up comedian (I can’t remember) said that contracts had cash bonuses if the player did not commit any crimes (e.g. illegal drugs). I guess sometimes, federal prosecution is not a strong enough motivator.
I’m curious how you all would feel about introducing gambling, in some sense, with children. Like a large fishbowl filled with slips of paper. Whenever they do something good, you let them go get a slip and receive whatever reward is written on it. Obviously you’d have to deal with cheating.
Although I’m weary about punish or rewarding doing chores as opposed to good effort. I feel like chores should just be expected of the child. Instead of it seeming like a job. But I suppose the randomness is supposed to help with that.
Odd as it may sound, it would have to be “structured randomness” so to speak. Picking a slip out of a bowl would probably work—getting a reward only when the parent is in the mood to give one would likely not. The latter is just as random from the child’s perspective, but inconsistent parenting (or animal training, or employee rewarding schemes) is known to be bad at shaping behaviour in the desired fashion.
That’s true. Arbitrary responses can lead to learned helplessness, although that’s for negative responses. I can imagine there is are more relevant psychological concepts.
I felt a bit uneasy with that as well. Does this sort of behaviour encourage gambling-like activities? Is an adult raised with the gambling reward more likely to walk into a casino and risk his family’s nest egg? Though, in the best case, the child grows up learning how to identify positive habits and trick himself into doing them (e.g. with the fishbowl of rewards).
Also, your comment on how these jobs should be “just expected” reminds me of sports contracts. A stand-up comedian (I can’t remember) said that contracts had cash bonuses if the player did not commit any crimes (e.g. illegal drugs). I guess sometimes, federal prosecution is not a strong enough motivator.