While Alex was on his camping trip with Grandpa and Josh this weekend, his most recent report card came in the mail. Turns out, he got straight “A”s! Ok, well, a couple were A-, but still. He’s been working so hard lately and we’ve been riding him so hard about getting his homework done, doing any available extra credit, and overall putting in the effort and doing the work we know he is capable of, that we both felt the need to reward him for his grades. The question is, how?
We don’t really like the idea of “paying for grades” any more than the naysayers of such reward systems, but we also wanted to show him that hard work pays off, more than “just” praise from parents and pride. In the real world, people are rewarded in some way for their hard work. Bonuses, raises, promotions, etc. So, while we didn’t want to just drop a wad of cash in his hands, we didn’t want to effectively blow it off, either.
We couldn’t decide on something right away, but then Alex came home today and saw his grades, and so the pressure was on for us to come up with the reward, whatever it may be. Since neither of us could come up with anything right away, I decided to do some research to see what other people did or are doing when their kids bring home remarkable report cards, whether it’s continued top marks, or solid improvement, or whatever.
As you can well imagine, the results covered the spectrum, from soapbox preachers ranting about how horrible it is to turn the process of learning into a tool that engenders greed, to reasonable analogies about how hard work and even good grades equal rewards in the real world. If a scholarship isn’t money for good grades, I don’t know what is. Some people had stories of kids getting as much as $50 per A, and as little as a pat on the back and everything in between.
Needless to say, it didn’t help me all that much, but it did help me channel my thoughts. In the end, I came up with a solution that would allow us to maintain the reward for hard work, without inspiring too much greed (I hope ;-).
We already had a positive reward system in place for good behavior. We call them “doodads” and they’re kind of like money, I guess. Chores and other daily life skills are rewarded when performed well without being reminded or whining or screwing around while doing them with various amounts of doodads that are printed on little slips of paper, similar to paper money in different amounts. Things they enjoy doing COST them certain amounts of doodads, such as 10 doodads for an hour of TV time, or 15 for an hour of video games. We had been rewarding hard work for school work with a small amount of doodads for doing homework without reminding, so it seemed a natural extension to reward good grades with doodads.
After some discussion, we finalized on 100 doodads per A (or in Nikolas’ case, a +) on a report card. Alex got 7 As on his report card, which got him 700 doodads. That might seem a lot, but they disappear quickly, especially when they’re not earning them as fast. We also decided to additionally reward report cards with all top marks by allowing the kid to choose a location for dinner including dessert at the same place or elsewhere after dinner.
For his straight A report card, Alex came away with 700 doodads and dinner at Dairy Queen (yeah, who’da thunk?) and dessert at Baskin Robbins (2 doors down ;-). I guess he likes DQ’s burgers. hehe
Now, we do have a doodad conversion policy. 100 doodads can be traded for a dollar, so I guess Alex got a dollar per A, $7 total. I’m sure most would agree that $7 isn’t a lot, but 700 doodads is worth a lot more as far as entertainment value.
Nikolas looks forward to his next report card. 😉