Positive Reinforcement Idea

[MomX2]

I've been doing this with my daughter and thought some other parents might like the idea. I know a lot of parents are faced with "to give a child cash rewards for good grades or not". There have been some arguments for and against doing so.

This is what I've done with my daughter. We got a small decorative jar at the start of the school year. For each A on her report card she gets a quarter in the jar and for each B she gets a dime (she would get a nickle for a C). We do this with each report card but she won't get the money until the end of the school year. She has enjoyed watching this add up through-out the year and like to add it up with each new report card to see how much she has earned. For younger kids who don't yet understand the value of money or can't add it up yet they can still have fun. It's fun for them to see the amount increase in the jar. They can count the number of quarters, number of dimes and number of nickles (say 7 quarters, 4 dimes and 2 nickles). Then you can tell them how much it adds up to.

Also for kids who are more C & B students I would probably offer the quarters for B's and dimes for C's. If the child then got an A I would probably give them one of those gold dollars for it (be sure to have some on hand in advance). I would try to set the child up for success. This is a long term reward where the child can see it grow. With some kids I might also offer a short term reward. My daughter also get points for doing her homework which can add up to a small reward at the end of the day or a larger reward if she is patient and waits several days to add up more points. It's always her choice.

If your child is really struggling this may not be helpful. Some other things I've done with my kids are a trip to Dairy Queen for completing a math workbook over the summer and reading to them before school in the morning. I set aside the time for them to work since I know they usually wouldn't remember to do these things on their own.

[jdmom]

When I was a teenager, dad started giving us $5 per A, $3 per B, $0 per C. If we got a D we owed HIM $3 and if we got an F, we owed him $5, not to mention we were grounded for 9 weeks, until the next report card, and then the grounding was only lifted if the grade came up. If we got C's or below, we had to bring that subject's book home every night, regardless of whether we had homework and review that day's subject matter. If we got straight A's, we got to go for ice cream that evening and a trip was planned to an amusement park. He didn't pay us for grades when we were young, but the amusement park for straight A's was an award we had always had.
It was really great incentive! The amusement park was a high goal, but one that my sister and I each achieved a couple of times.
As a teenager, the money was especially nice. If I planned it right, I could get that certain thing that mom and dad had vetoed as "too expensive and not necessary".
And the grounding for 9 weeks was definitley a bummer. It wasn't a total grounding, we still got to attend school functions and were allowed to play outside with neighborhood kids for 1 hour after school. But, no spending the night with a friend, no friends over at our house, no telephone priviledges, no video or computer games. Tv was allowed only if you had completed what HE felt was a sufficient time studying and the rest of the family was watching television.
I plan on using this same strategy when my son gets older.

[MomX2]

I have a different system with my older child (my daughter is still in grade school). He felt that he should be paid because one of his friends gets $100 for every A or something like that, seriously). He thought that was really unfair since his friend doesn't do very well or try to accomplish much in school and he works very hard. There is no way he is getting a $100 as if I had that much to give him anyway. We came to agreement that every time he gets on Honor Roll he gets $5 put in an envelope. If he were to get Honor Roll for every 9 weeks then he would get an extra $5 at the end of the school year so a total of $25 for spending over the summer. He missed it by a couple of points the last grading period though so he's likely to only get $15 for this school year. But then he has a lot of other opportunities to earn cash too.

I guess my only caution with using this type of system is to make sure your child is capable of succeeding before using it. It would be really hard on a child with an unrecognized learning disability or more severe form of ADHD to be punished for not being able to do well enough. I've seen where some kids were able to make straight A's all the way through gradeschool only to start failing in the upper grades because of an unidentified LD such as Dyslexia. Then they are often blamed for their failure because no one believes they could have made A's in gradeschool if they had an LD. Kids with above average intelligence combined with an LD are often misunderstood and punished for it.