Bribing

There is many a parent who goes for bribing a child to do what they want him to do because the child may initially be very adamantly refusing to oblige or just going into a tantrum as a gesture of defiance, much to the parent’s discomfort especially if out in the public domain at the time.

Bribing a child invariably works because the parent is giving in to the child’s demands, much to the child’s satisfaction. Is this a wise move? Many will say that it is the only way to get the child to ‘behave’ himself, and by this is really meant that this is the easiest way that they have found to be successful in bringing the child up with the least hassle. There is little doubt that a child, if facing a reward for doing a specific job, will usually be glad to do it. Because bringing up a child is the most difficult of all life’s tasks, the parent, from the other side of the fence, will be glad to ease that burden of difficulty by bribing. Does it do the child any good?

The benefit of bribes for the child is more money, more time watching TV, more sweets, being allowed to undertake some previously banned fun activities, to name but just a few. At that stage of the child’s life the child feels good. He has managed to control his parent into doing what he, the child, wants, by bartering to his advantage.

The child has a right to be brought up in a manner that is consistent with training him for his future period of adult life where he should be able to integrate with other people hopefully with reasonable ease, and where he will feel able to help someone in need without thinking of benefitting himself, but thinking only of the other person. If the child is always insistent upon a reward when young, and the parent is party to it, then it may be very difficult, when he is an adult, for him to think about assisting anyone without wanting some tangible reward, such as a bribe, then there is a great risk that he will not be able to absorb the fact that assisting someone, and not relying on a reward, can be very rewarding in itself.

A child has the right not to be put in a position where in the future he wants a reward for an activity that is required of him. He has the right to expect to be brought up such that he gets satisfaction from doing the task asked of him, without the need for a consideration of any material advantage from it. He has that right, but it can be very difficult for a parent to consider that that should be the aim when such a course as ‘no bribing’ needs more effort on his part.