A friend of mine looked more unhappy than usual the other day, so I asked him if there was a problem.
“Not really,” he said, “but my wife and I have been arguing a lot lately over how to discipline the children. She has read all these books and articles that say we’re supposed to be using time outs and stuff like that, but it just doesn’t seem to work. How did you go about discipling your kids when they were young?”
“Well,” I answered, “my first born was my daughter and when she was young — I’m talking about two-years old or so — she loved to stroll over to my bookcase and then she would leisurely, defiantly actually, proceed to unload it, book by book. Now the first 20 or 30 times she did that it was actually kind of cute, but since I was the one who had to keep getting up and putting all the books back, it got old pretty quick. I kept telling her not to do it, and after one too many times of her ignoring me, I got up went over and swatted her butt, only to have my very upset wife point out that she could see my handprint on my crying daughter’s backside. So that was the end of my spanking days, and then when my kids got to be about the age that yours are now, I simply turned to bribery.”
“Bribery?
“That’s right.”
“You mean you paid them to be good?”
“Well, not exactly, but I soon discovered that what today’s teenagers want most in the entire world, other than electronic gadgets, cool clothes and junk food, is extra spending money. However, very few of them actually want to get a job or do chores around the house to earn it. So, I came up with what I called a good kid’s dividend’.”
“A good kid’s dividend?”
“That’s right,” I said. “You know, kind of like an end-of-the-year bonus that a boss gives to an employee who’s had a really productive year.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Nope, once my kids became more interested in money than toys, I made them a deal. If they managed to stay out of trouble, and by that I mean such things as staying away from smoking, alcohol and drugs, doing relatively well in school, coming home at the proper hour, keeping their rooms clean enough that people could actually walk through them, stuff like that, then I would fork over at the end of the year a good kid’s dividend.”
“So, didn’t that get pretty expensive?”
“Not really,” I said. “All parents spend way too much money on their kids anyway, so instead of always buying them stuff they really didn’t need, like $150 tennis shoes, I squirreled it all away for their good kid’s dividend. If you haven’t already figured it out, our kids end up getting most of our money anyway, so I just cut out the middleman.”
“And that worked?”
“Well, who knows, but at the end of each year, if they hadn’t caused me any more grief than usual, and it they were all still in school working towards some kind of degree, and if no one was pregnant that shouldn’t be, and if I hadn’t had to bail anyone out of jail, then they got their bonus.”
“I think my wife would absolutely hate that idea,” said my friend.
“So did mine. But it worked.”