Literacy is a key to learning. Reading boosts imagination, vocabulary, empathy, and so many other areas of development. As parents, we rejoice when our kids develop a love of reading.
As long as there have been readily accessible books, though, there have been children (and adults) who were interested and those who just didn’t care for reading at all. As technology has grown, it has offered kids ever more distractions and alternative entertainments, even pulling the attention of some kids who might otherwise have enjoyed spending their free time with a novel.
Some parents, desperate to foster a lifelong love of reading, have started bribing their kids to partake of novels. Does it work?
Paying Kids To Read Books
One mom, Teran Sands, made it to the Today Show when her desperate trick to get her kids reading drew attention. Yes, this mom is literally paying her kids $5 per chapter book.
It’s important to note that her ten-year-old daughter was already happily reading graphic novels, and Sands felt that she needed to “read a page with multiple paragraphs on it.” So, she started doling out cash to achieve that end.
Experts generally agree that reading is important, whether kids are reading graphic novels, classics, or modern chapter books.
However, for this family, the parents had a specific desired reading goal and found a way to motivate their child to achieve it.
Are Book Bribes Really A New Thing?
I grew up with the Accelerated Reader program. It’s how I got my first Walkman, and even when the prizes were pencils and bookmarks, just winning something was still exciting.
We also had Pizza Hut’s BookIt program, where kids earned free pizza for reading, and the library’s Summer Reading Program, which offered a variety of prizes, including books and toys.
Then there are the more implicit ‘rewards,’ like knowing that if you’re reading quietly, the teacher won’t decide that she needs to dole out busy work for the last few minutes of class, or that parents or less likely to find a chore for a kid who’s reading peacfully than, say, for one who’s practicing trampolice tricks on the living room furniture.
When my oldest kids were little, our standard was that someone reading quietly could have an extra hour before lights out, and my kids all know that the “Mom, can I have” question is an almost sure “yes” if the object in question was a book.
One way or another, we’ve been rewarding our kids for generations for choosing to spend time on books, and for choosing the books we preferred, so while paying them in cash might be a bit unusual, the overarching theme here is longstanding.
Fostering A Love Of Reading
How do we teach our kids to love reading?
The best ways that we know involve lots of exposure to good books.
Kids should see their parents reading for pleasure.
Before our kids can read for themselves, they should be read to by a parent every day, and that should be a loving, shared experience. (After they can read for themselves, it’s still a great habit to keep up where possible. Sharing books is a joy and opens lots of excellent discussion.)
We should be providing our kids with great books, which don’t necessarily mean deep literary works and valued classics. It can also mean books our kids relate to, books that make them laugh, books that make them feel empowered, and books that they just enjoy.
Taking our kids to the library or the bookstore to choose books for themselves matters.
Giving books as gifts encourages children to see them as valued treasures, not just another chore.
Making books a part of everyday life may be the most effective way to encourage kids to love them.
Despite that, there will always be some kids who just aren’t interested, and there will always be distractions.
Extrinsic & Intrinsic Motivation
Whether it’s reading, learning, chores, or kindness, experts do warn that it’s better for a child’s motivation to come from inside.
A child who wants to help, learn, clean, or read because it feels good will continue doing so, while a child who does the same because it’s expected, or for fear of punishment or a reward, may not keep it up when those external motivating factors are absent.
Just the same, we use these external motivating factors for all of these other expectations as well. Kids get paid for chores, rewarded for doing schoolwork, and may even receive external rewards for showing kindness.
Fostering a love of reading (and a love of learning, and joy in accomplishment) will always be the best option for raising a reader. If we can teach our kids to read for the love of books, rather than as a side quest to earn rewards, we should.
That said, if kids are reading, no matter what the motivation, it’s better than not reading, and in a world of video games, TikTok, and algorithmic hypnosis, we’re facing stiff competition. Parents can do what works (within reason, of course) and feel good about it.
And if you’re a parent looking for something funny to read, check out these hilarious parenting books.