I’m still on the “incentivizing children” bandwagon. It’s so hard to let it go. In fact, I have some blog posts on this site that are dedicated to this very topic. You can find them under the “Reading and Writing FUNdamentals” category of blog posts. And, the series is entitled “Incentivizing the Young Reader and Writer.”
Because I’m in a position of educating other people’s children, not just my own, I find it very helpful to go back and look at these relevant pieces of content in light of my current role as a reading tutor.
For today’s discourse, I actually bypassed the “oldie but goodie” blog posts about incentivizing children and went down memory lane with an ebook that I created years ago for the wonderful individuals who have subscribed to my monthly newsletter. It’s also about incentivizing children, especially when they’re faced with tasks that are challenging and/or undesirable. I took out some bits and pieces from the ebook and highlighted them at the end.
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Okay, so let’s get into those bits and pieces I pulled from the ebook I created about incentivizing children. And, just keep in mind that the ebook was created by a parent (me) for parents. But, I’m choosing to look at it NOW from the perspective of a reading tutor working with children.
Here are some excerpts:
You’ll come across those unwelcomed moments when your precious baby has his or her resistance guard up (when it comes to doing the “undesirables”), and you’re going to have to combat that. Sometimes, you’ll have to sweeten a bitter pot and let your child stir to get more of a willing participant in getting those undesirable tasks accomplished.
What if your child had more buy-in on what he or she is asked to do? What if you could make the task easier or more enjoyable to accomplish? Don’t you think your child would perform better at that task instead of doing it begrudgingly? You owe it to yourself and your child to find out. So, let’s discuss the part you play in helping to incentivize your child to GET WORK DONE.
Being a child is universal, and we all start down that road initially before we ever venture into adulthood. So, we can put ourselves in their small but constantly growing shoes for a moment or two to get some much-needed childlike perspective to fight fire with fire. And here comes the aha moment.
Use your experience as a child and your experiences with your child to incentivize him or her, why don’t you?!
So, I think that’s all that I’ll show you of the excerpts. And just that brief bit is going to set us up nicely for tomorrow’s blog post, where I’ll actually go into detail on some of those ways I’m choosing to sweeten the pot, get more buy-in, make tasks more enjoyable, and receive more cooperation and participation from my tutees.
And, I do use my experience as a child and experiences with my own children as inspiration to assist me in incentivizing the wonderful children I’m blessed with the opportunity to serve and support.
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