MONEY QUESTION OF THE WEEK
When it comes to money decisions, it can be hard to figure out the right thing to do So in this space, we gather personal finance luminaries to weigh in on a financial quandary
This week: Should you pay your children for good grades?
Ron Lieber “Your Money” columnist for The New York Times and author of the upcoming The Opposite of Spoiled: The overwhelming consensus among most academics is that this reduces intrinsic motivation and, oddly, can make good eager learners want to learn and do less over time Someone I know who was a straight-A student in high school was given a free skip day by her mother each semester She was a responsible kid, so her mother let her pick a day to blow off school entirely once in a while to sleep in or frolic with her boyfriend I like that one — it’s not a bribe, per se, but a reward for being consistently outstanding and trustworthy
Gail Vaz-Oxlade
author of 13 financial books including Money-Smart Kids: Absolutely not Good grades are a reflection of effort and determination Paying for them makes the reward external, which it should not be To encourage a love of learning and a good work ethic, kids need to see the grades as the reward for their hard work What do you do the year your son struggles with physics but sticks it through doing his best, pulling only a 57%? Paul Lermitte, financial adviser and author of Allowances, Dollars & Sense: Rewarding children with stone cold cash gives them no connectedness to the love or motivation to what their success and accomplishment can be
Dr. Denise Cummins research psychologist, author, and contributor to Psychology Today: The good grades themselves should be rewards There are numerous studies showing that the easiest way to make an activity that is intrinsically rewarding no longer rewarding is to provide an extrinsic reward for doing it So, for example, most children find reading story books intrinsically rewarding and will spend hours reading and re-reading the same books But if you reward them for reading, reading no longer feels rewarding A shift will occur in the child’s mind so that “reading” now means “work ”