Rewards, bribery, and the gimmes.

We had gotten somewhere with Erin. I could have sworn we'd pretty much fully overcome the gimmes. Sure, she still asked for stuff, but every sentence out of her mouth no longer started with "I want" or "Can I have", so life was good. We had stopped rewarding her for good behavior, or buying her much of anything. That's how we were trying to get one up on the gimmes, just stop giving her stuff, because she was taking it for granted, and also not taking care of the stuff she was given (like leaving her Nintendo DS and $150's worth of games and accessories at a unit function, and then not even caring that it was gone, figuring she'd just get another. Uh, no.) Thak said she just wasn't getting anything else for a while, and I agreed.

Well, last Friday, we figured it had been long enough. She told us that she had made an E on a spelling test. That is the first time she has ever not completely flunked one, and an E is a fabulous improvement over the U's she had been getting every week, so I proposed that we get ice cream. That's where it all fell apart.

This morning, she asked where she could send her list of stuff that she wanted from the Easter Bunny, and was very disappointed when I informed her that the Easter Bunny didn't take gimme lists, that she'd just get whatever he/she decided to bring. Then this afternoon, on the way home, she told me she got an E on an assignment about Ben Franklin. I barely got "good job!" out of my mouth before she said, "And I get ice cream now?"

Fuck.

Every Captain Obvious jerk of an "expert" will tell you that rewarding good behavior is a solid tactic for encouraging it. The problem is, then the kid just does whatever it is for the bribe, not because it's the right thing to do. Erin now thinks she gets ice cream every time she does well on some random assignment at school. I explained to her that she got rewarded for doing well on her spelling test because spelling is her hardest subject, and she'd never done that well before. I could tell she didn't understand. She made another E on something that basically amounted to a worksheet, and wanted her ice cream, damn it. So now she is all disappointed because she didn't get ice cream for her E. Hopefully this doesn't mean she starts half-assing assignments again like she was before. I'm NOT buying grades in ice cream, and it's becoming more and more apparent that we haven't beaten the gimmes.

She was so good for almost a whole week.... I seriously thought we were getting somewhere.