Should you bribe your kids to read?
Adventures in fostering intrinsic motivation
A recent op-ed in the New York Times described the author, a parent, paying her daughter $100 to finish a book.
At this rate, the Tooth Fairy might have to declare bankruptcy, but her decision raised an interesting question: is it a good idea to essentially bribe your child to read?
Let’s examine the literature from the perspective of a former child who always had her nose “stuck in a book,” Belle from Beauty and the Beast-style.
Cold hard cash: an increasingly common incentive to turn kids into readers
Another parenting columnist interviewed several neuroscientists on this topic back in 2016. Here’s an excerpt of what one of the experts said:
If you pay kids to read you’ll get them to read,” said Edward Deci, the author of “Why We Do What We Do” and a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. “They’ll continue to read until you end the experiment, and then they’ll stop.” Rewards encourage children to think of reading as something you have to be paid to do, not something that brings pleasure in itself.
So, just as a family culture where chores are just what you do is going to look different from one where each chore has a cash incentive, there’s nothing inherently wrong with making reading an actual book seem more appealing with money — but don’t be surprised if your kid doesn’t self-identify as someone who gets inherent pleasure from the act of reading itself.
Half of adults aren’t reading either
If we look at the book reading habits of adults, about half of them aren’t readers, so it’s not surprising that children model the adult behavior they see.
According to a YouGov survey conducted in December 2023, 46% of US adults did not read or listen to a book in the past year. This is a significant number, and here are some other findings from the survey:
Reading habits
27% of respondents read 1–5 books, 9% read 6–10 books, and 11% read 20 or more books.
If you want to be in the top 20% of this Pareto distribution, one of the most powerful things you can do is to read literature yourself. Even many prominent intellectuals have reported their focus for long-form narratives becoming noticeably blunted — and we have our theories on the proximate cause.
Summer reading programs: different kinds of rewards to consider
Clearly, students who are precocious readers are likely to derive more pleasure from a task that comes easily to them. School librarians have been moving the goal posts on how they can entice a love of reading in their students. (Librarians are, it’s safe to say, the bookish type.)
What a study from 2009 found is that kids that just aren’t “into” books can have a more positive experience when the programs are designed thoughtfully and with the realities of human motivation are taken into consideration.
Relevant rewards given to students with low intrinsic motivation can have long-term positive impact. If rewards are based on quality (e.g., challenging her reading level or selecting a genre he never read before) and are not controlling and the rewards are gradually removed, shifting the emphasis to the individual student’s progress and accomplishment, students can begin to move from an extrinsic to more of an intrinsic orientation.
Below is a librarian’s comment.
In 2009, we began offering the choice of a free book to children in preschool through fifth grade after they read twelve hours. I watched a ten-year-old girl go through the prize selection at her branch. She asked the librarian for something else, so the librarian brought out the entire supply box and the girl looked through that box too. Finally, she found the book she wanted. She hugged the book to her chest and bounced on her toes with excitement, and I felt she was truly rewarded!
Reading as an act of curiosity
One of the myths about increasing literacy is that this can only be achieved through “proper” high-falutin literature. This is patently false. It’s far more effective to let your child explore the topics and authors that are inherently of interest to that student.
COVID-19 was absolutely devastating for the reading scores of 4th and 8th graders — literacy is a skill, and one that becomes both easier and more enjoyable with practice.
So, if you believe that the only way your teen is going to get through The Great Gatsby or Little Women is if you throw some cash into the equation, it’s not necessarily the worst idea.
If your student has other challenges specific to their literacy or reading comprehension which makes preparing for tests difficult, be in touch — our tutors are trained to help students with a wide variety of challenges in this field. Remember, reading and writing well is the number one skill to succeed in the knowledge economy, so even if their future will mostly be reading emails, it’s vital to lay that foundation of engaging with texts for comprehension before they graduate.