Greg Bruce: How to bribe your kids for fun (yours) and profit (theirs)

Bribery: easy, effective, fun. Photo / Getty

OPINION

Bribery has a bad rap. A recent paper co-authored by successful businesses Deloitte and Chapman Tripp puts the prevailing view succinctly: “There is an increasingly global consensus that bribery and corruption are transnational phenomena with widespread and pernicious consequences, which must be combatted on a collective basis.”

This sort of view is so widely held and uncontroversial as to appear self-evident, but the success of my family’s recent, wildly successful, experiment with bribery suggests that maybe it’s time for a rethink.

The need for radical action had been on the horizon for a while because our kids’ unwillingness to listen to a word we said had led us to the end of our collective tethers, but the inciting incident arrived one evening when my wife was putting the kids to bed and our 8 year old asked her: “Do you guys stay up all night and that’s why you’re so angry all the time?”

I was shocked by our daughter’s lack of insight, but I was also shocked by her appraisal of us. I had always thought of myself as a fun parent, and it was a slap in the face to see myself the way my children see me. For the good of all of us, something had to change.

We set up online accounts, which the kids were able to access using their own Eftpos-style cards, and we started bribing them by depositing $1 each for every day they were able to get ready for school by 8am. Our mornings were instantly, radically transformed. It was, without doubt, the best decision we’ve ever made as parents, and it shames me to admit it took us so long to think of it.

We are only a little over a week into this experiment, but bribery is so far the only method to have proven consistently successful in ensuring our kids get to the bus on time, without my wife and I needing to nag and yell at them for 90 minutes or more.

Given this instant success, the plan is to introduce more and more bribery into our kids’ lives, hopefully transforming a whole range of difficult situations, including, but not limited to: kids brushing their teeth, going to bed, getting in the car on time for crucial appointments and hitting their siblings.

The short- and medium-term impacts are a reduction in stress, but the long-term impacts on familial relationships and parental mental health are incalculable. It’s a clear win-win.

But if you are still struggling with the moral issues, you might find it useful to reframe the situation, editing out the tawdry ethics via the wonders of wordplay: if “bribery” doesn’t suit you, how about “performance-based incentive scheme”?

No doubt at least one reader is going to do some tough talking in the comments, along the lines of: “Those kids need to learn the hard way! Let them explain to their teacher why they’re late to school and they won’t do it again!” To that strawman, I would say, firstly, our kids have been late more than once, which is clear evidence they can and will do it again, and, secondly, why do these people have such an unholy love for “the hard way”?

“Bribery” is just another word for “negotiation”, which is another word for “using social skills to get what you want”: giving things to get other things, letting people get their way in order to get our own way, and that sort of thing. By “incentivising” our children this way, we are teaching them a crucial life skill – one they will definitely need if they’re to have any hope of going on to a career at either Deloitte or Chapman Tripp.