Bribing vs. encouraging kids to do good

“Can I have masa with my suya?” asked six year-old Muna Igwe. “I would like strawberry and vanilla, yogurt, mummy,” her ten year-old sister Adaora said. The children were at their favourite suya spot preparing to have a ball as they enjoy some with their mother. They had spent most of their Saturday morning tidying […]

“Can I have masa with my suya?” asked six year-old Muna Igwe. “I would like strawberry and vanilla, yogurt, mummy,” her ten year-old sister Adaora said.

The children were at their favourite suya spot preparing to have a ball as they enjoy some with their mother. They had spent most of their Saturday morning tidying up their room and helping their mum clean the house and get rid of all the rubbish. The suya came as a surprise treat and they are enjoying spending the time with their mum.

According to their mother, Mrs. Rita Igwe, “They were a great delight to work with this morning. Waking them up on a Saturday morning to tidy up has never been one of their favourite past times. I usually have to scream and threaten to get them to even lay their beds. But today they woke up, cleaned their room properly and came down to help me with the living room and kitchen areas.”

Mrs. Igwe adds, “What impressed me the most was that there had been no bickering or arguments between them. I was saying to myself, what angel visited these children during the night? I regulate their suya intake. So when I said we were going to have some their excitement rang through the entire house.”

If their mother had made the treat a condition on good their behaviour, the suya would not have been a special surprise treat; and it would have been considered a bribe.

Adaora and Muna would most likely have been behaving themselves in expectation of the reward which awaits them, not because it’s the right thing to do.

If for instance, before they began cleaning up, their mother had said, “If you tidy up properly and behave, I will take you out to have some suya when we are done cleaning,” it may work.

But as Lydia Imo explained, bribery is an ineffective means to teach children good behaviour. “In such a case as with Muna and Adaora, when the children work, they are only co-operating with their mum because there is a prize. They would not be developing any inner motivation or thinking skills even for those they ordinarily should do. They are also not developing sympathy or consideration for the needs of other people.

Mrs. Judith Adesanya said, “I would never have imagined that this would be regarded as bribery. I also have two girls who I chide once in a while to do certain things with a reward attached to it if they do it. I told my older daughter that she could only watch a certain cartoon programme after she finished some chores I had asked her to do. She quickly went about it and finished it with hardly any mistakes when I checked. So I allowed her watch the programme.”

Professor Jenkeri Okwori of the Ahmadu Bello University said this may not be considered a bribe. He explains that “If you know about animal behaviour the training of a child is as such. Even based psychologists like Sigmund Freud have theorized that a good action when rewarded allows for that action to be repeated. So if you take it from the perspective of a dog been trained and how it acts when rewarded after an action it has carried out, it is likely to repeat that action and this can be the same in humans.

“We do things because we will get something from it. We go to school because we expect certificates that will help us get jobs. The entire human life is about doing and if you like reward.

“When a child performs a task and you reward him, you are encouraging the child. That is not bribery. But if you give something to a child as an inducement to do what is not proper, that is bribery.”

Okwori explained further. “As an adult the child catches you taking a piece of meat from the soup pot and you then cut a portion of it and give him to silence him, that is bribery. You are encouraging a child to conceal a wrong that has been done. This is wrong.

Some people are encouraged when they are rewarded. People get to realize that if there is a reward for doing something they will do it without being chided to do act. It is not given for purposes of deceit or to hide or cover up anything negative. And usually such reward is not given secretly. Sometimes this could even introduce competition.”

He advised that it is a method that parents should adopt because rewarding can encourage good behaviour. “If punish accompanies bad behaviour, then reward should accompany good behaviour.”