Friday, January 11, 2013

The Sweetness of Learning

My husband and I have been "rewarding" (that is, bribing!) our daughters with chocolate chips to get them read - to get my older one to read in Hebrew (she needs no reward to read in English and was horrified to read recently of a girl who read "only" 3 books a week!) and to get my younger one to read in English.  I'd been feeling a little guilty about this practice, as it conflicts with my principle that learning should be its own reward.  But principles and reality are often at odds, especially when it comes to parenting.  Then I remembered the ancient Jewish tradition of dabbing some honey on the alef-bet - the alphabet - when a child first starts to learn his (back then it was always his) letters - so he would know that learning is sweet.  And I felt better.

8 comments:

  1. Hi: I love the title of your blog. I often say that when I'm having a terrible, horrible no good, very bad day. I used chocolate chips to teach my daughters to count to 100, I took 100 chocolate chips, and when they had successfully counted them, they could eat them!

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  2. I have to be honest, I resorted to a few things like that when my daughter was young and never regretted it. I used M&Ms for math, and it worked.

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  3. Oh yeah, M&M's in an egg carton for early math learning, those were the days.

    I still put out a small bowl of chocolate at homework time, for "brain food." I've been using that Jewish tradition for justification for over a decade now (and I'm not even Jewish).

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  4. Thanks to everyone who came over from the comment challenge and commented! I'm feeling very popular. :-)

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  5. I will confess using chocolate chips for a less honorable purpose.. potty training. And it has been working.

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  6. Greetings! I'm hopping over from the 2013 Comment Challenge. You have a lovely blog. Here's to a fun and productive 2013!

    Donna L Martin

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  7. I think every parent has a little bribing secret....

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