Nephew off to school on time (or When bribery wins the battle but looses the war!) Posted by:Lloyd Woodward--Tuesday, May 12, 2009

My nephew is in Second Grade. He has missed school enough times that his mother might receive a citation. Plus, he is often late to school. He is staying with us for a few days and we found out how hard it can be to get him out of bed and get him ready for school. His mother has had some health problems and certainly it is difficult for her to handle all of these issues with my nephew.


He throws a temper tantrum. He passively resists. He begins to scream and hyperventilate. He is big for a Second Grader and he just puts up a heck of a fight. Yesterday, I had left for work and my wife struggled with him and finally got him to school late.

We talked with his mother. She says the thing that works best is to tell him that if he gets ready for school, there will be some special treat after school, like going somewhere that he likes. Apparently, this often works with him; however, it does not always work or else he would not have attendance and tardiness issues.

Here's the problem with bribery. It reinforces bad behavior. If you are yelling, screaming, and generaly being a pain and I come up and promise you something nice, then you are going to learn that if you yell, scream, and be a pain that you will be rewarded. Remember: kids are smart. They can figure things out much better than we give them credit for. My nephew has figured out two important things.

(1) By carrying on like he does he can often miss school or at least go in late. This works for him because he hates school.

(2) That often he will get offered something special if he just stops being a pain and goes to school. This works for him also because otherwise he would not get the special activities. So, it's reasonable that he would act this way because on both counts it works for him.

Now he is in Second Grade. Imagine him with 50 more pounds and two extra feet. That's what we will have to deal with when he is a teenager. He will be much harder to get to school then.

We passed on the bribery. Not going to happen. He has to go to school because it's the law that he go to school every day and because we have to get to work. We aren't promising him anything special for doing what he is suppossed to do every day. We know he can get up and get ready and go to school and that's what we expect.

Here's what I did last night to prepare him for going to school on time. I picked him up at his Grandparents. In the car I told him that tomorrow he was going to go to school on time. He said he wasn't going to go to school on time. I replied that he would certainly go on time and that we would make sure of it. He wanted to know why we would do that and I told him that was a good question but sorry I don't have a real good answer- it's just the way it is. He got rather mouthy and informed me that he hated school and he didn't see why going in on time was important. I agreed that sometimes school sucks.

Before he got out of the car I asked him to help me check my Child Care Locks on the door (I sometimes call them Shuman Locks I explained to him because I often take Juveniles to Shuman Center in the my car and I put these locks on so that they can't escape.) By doing this he could see that once I put him my back seat, he was not going to open the door and jump out.

Once we got inside we had a talk. My wife and explained to him that she had to go to work early and that I was going to be the only one home in the morning with him. I told him we could wake him up very early so that he could have time to get ready for school and that, regardless, we would be leaving on time.

I then told him that I would not fight with him to get him out of bed. I showed him the target area of the face that I use to wake someone up. I drew an imaginary line above the eyebrows and down the cheek to under the chin. I told him I would apply only a little bit of water to that area of his face to help him wake up and that I would use only enough water that I thought was necessary.

He paid attention. His had a look of incredulousness on his face, as though he found the whole thing unbelievable. Then, my wife and I (we had already come to understanding between the two of us) asked him what did he think would happen if he refused to get dressed for school?

Nephew: You'll tell me the Easy Way or the Hard Way? [This is a saying that I have used with him before.]

US: Yes, but what do you think the hard way will be?

Nephew: "You're going to put me in the car anyway?" [he deduced from the Shuman Locks bit]

Us: You are very smart. Yes, you are exactly right! You will be in the car on time whether you are dressed or not and I'll put the clothes in the back seat with you and you can finish getting dressed at school. In fact, if you prefer you can go to school in your PJs and just get dressed at school. [The idea of this seemed to upset him a little bit.]

Later, when he was in the bathtub he began screaming and yelling. Nothing in particular, just screaming and yelling. We figured he wasn't drowning as long as he was making all that noise and we pretty much ignored it. I think he was attempting to intimidate us by showing us what he was capable of if we crossed him. Think of a gorrila beating his chest just to show the other apes that they better not mess with him. Also, at this point if we were to have insisted that he stop yelling he might not have quit it. It could have turned into a pointless powere struggle.

Morning came around. We woke him up early- no problem and no water necessary. My wife put his clothes on a chair by the front door and she left for work. I made breakfast- french toast- one of the few things I can make. I called him for breakfast and he yelled, "I'm coming I'm coming you don't have to keep calling me." I gave him a cheery "that's good, I'm glad to see you're up and coming downstairs." He asked for seconds and that was no problem.

After that everything was incredibly easy. I didn't expect it to be easy. I thought we were going to have a showdown, one that I was sure I would win, but it never happened. I promted him to brush his teeth when he was in the bathroom. He already had. I came downstairs to tell him it was time to get dressed but he already was dressed. In fact, he was standing by the door waiting for me. He was ready first! He had no more questions about why we had to go to school on time- he had accepted that that is just the way it is.

We had a nice early morning chat in the car on the way to school. Nice talk. No beligerance. Just nice talk. We were early for school arriving at 7:33 AM. I chatted with the School Social Worker who was standing outside when I dropped him off. I gave him a big hug and told him I loved him. He said he loved me too and that was it.

Will it be this easy every morning? I doubt it. Did we get lucky? Sure we did. But you know we were prepared to get him to school on time. We had a plan. We told him what the plan was and he believed that we were dead serious. I think having him help me check to make sure the Shuman Locks worked helped him to see how serious we were about it all.

If he needed to be put in the back seat of the car with his clothes handed to him, it probably wouldn't have happened twice. I would have also put the seat belt on him and while he could take it off again, I was planning on contining to put it back on so that we were driving legal. If at some point he agreed to get dressed I would have pulled the car over and allowed him to take off the seat belt and get dressed. And I would have been careful not to lecture him about it too, just to accept that he was now ready to get dressed; however, we would have already been out of the house and down the road a bit before that happened. Once out of the house we were not going back into the house but rather we would continue to school as best we could.

The other thing we told him was that if this turned out to be an ongoing problem we would get him up earlier and earlier each morning to allow the time necessary.

Maybe we just got lucky and dodged a bullit today. Maybe not. But think about how if left to his own devices, this young man might grow up to have serious problems. As long as he is able to decide if and what time he is going to show up at school he is going to have way too much power. Remember the Oil TV comercials? The one where "You can pay me now or you can pay me later?" That's the way it is with going to school on time problems. Take care of it now- or it's going to be harder to take care of it down the road. And by then you don't just have real dirty oil, but you got serious engine problems too.

Bribery: more reading.