Bribing Children Every parent has bribed, or considered bribing, his or her child at some point. Whether its for something s

Support and explain your answer to the writing prompt in a well-developed essay. You may refer to the reading selection to support your own points and ideas. The essay must be primarily your own ideas, and you can use your own experience and knowledge to support your ideas. You may use a dictionary during the test. You should not read other sources related to this topic for the test. An essay that uses other sources will be considered plagiarism and cheating and that essay will get a zero. READING SELECTION: Bribing Children Every parent has bribed, or considered bribing, his or her child at some point. Whether it’s for something small, like making a bed – “ If you make your bed, I’ll give you a dollar” – or something big, like having a private conversation – “Here, you can play with my iPhone; I need to talk to the doctor.” But does this really work? Recently, journalists Bruce Feiler and KJ Dell’Antonia engaged in an online debate on the question whether parents should bribe their children. Dell’Antonia, who describes herself as an “unabashed briber”, had successfully paid her four elementary school children to complete their assigned summer reading and planned more bribes for the school year. In her words, “When it comes to certain activities, like reading books or eating nutritious food, what’s wrong with ‘just doing it for rewards’? Those are activities with long-term rewards that don’t necessarily feel fun for children because every child is not mature or motivated enough to put in the work to get there without a reward.” There are benefits to this approach. Offering bribes or rewards to children for help with basic chores can help parents get through the day with less argument and less stress. Increased cooperation with daily tasks then frees parents to more get involved in other activities with their children. But journalist Bruce Feiler pointed out the practical and moral complications of frequent bribes. In his words, “Bribes don’t work for long, and children begin to negotiate about everything they are asked to do.” They will only do things for a treat. A child might say, “Sure, I’ll clean my room. How much are you going to give me for that?” Feiler especially opposed monetary rewards, citing research that money tends to make all of us greedier and more selfish. There might be short-term benefits to bribing children, but in the long term there can be problems. Eventually, children won’t be motivated to do something for the right reasons; they will just focus on the reward they can get. Some problems cannot be solved by bribing kids. For instance, when a child always complains about doing homework, parents need to find out the causes of the problem since the issue may be something other than motivation.