Do you reward your kid with food?

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  • fteale
    fteale Posts: 5,310 Member
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    I totally bribed my older son to toilet train using chocolate buttons. He was 3 and 2 months, perfectly old enough, and capable of using the loo, but he was a lazy little so and so, and just couldn't be bothered. Using an incentive for a few weeks just got him in the habit.

    I suppose I do use food as a reward in other ways too. Not giving them sweets, but I do tell them we'll go for pizza or dim sum if they are well behaved while we are out. If they aren't well behaved we'll just go home and have something less exciting for lunch.

    Edit - no one in my family has ever had weight issues so it isn't something I see as a problem.
  • sjschewlakow
    sjschewlakow Posts: 120 Member
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    I homeschool. That said, my oldest even though math is easy for him will spend 1-2 hours doing his math. So I told him if he does it under 30minutes, he gets a donut. My boys don't get donuts normally. Some days he gets a donut, other days he doesn't. It is a powerful motivator. :D
  • ShilohMaier
    ShilohMaier Posts: 135
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    I am potty training my two year old right now, and yes, she gets rewarded with candy. It wasn't my idea. My daycare lady uses that method, and there is another little girl potty training right now along with my daughter- that little girl's mother also used the candy reward. Well, the first time my daughter went on the potty, she expected to get a treat the same as the other little girl... and so I got a phone call at work with my little girl in tears in the background because my daycare lady knows that my daughter is not allowed to have candy or sweets. And hearing my little girl crying because she doesn't understand why she's not getting a treat like the other little girl broke my heart. I figured I could very well make just as many hang-ups by forbidding candy as I could by using it as a reward. That's a tough one for me.
  • soon2bhotmom
    soon2bhotmom Posts: 108 Member
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    I reward my children for living another year with cake.


    LOL! me too!
  • k8blujay2
    k8blujay2 Posts: 4,941 Member
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    I try not to... but lately I just assume that my little one is fussying because her teeth are trying to come in... so I will give her a bit of a graham cracker... But even then I am working on being more mindful..
  • yesthistime
    yesthistime Posts: 2,051 Member
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    I think the candy for potty training is very different than getting a cookie to stop crying. One is rewarding a very special milestone and important new skill, and the other is pacifying potentially negative behavior. There are only so many times a kid can go pee, so the moderation factor is sort of built in with the potty training example. A kid can cry all day every day if it means he or she will get a cookie. Also, children get to a point (and pretty quickly, at that) where using the potty just makes more sense intrinsically than wetting themselves, so the candy reward is not needed to elicit the behavior for very long at all. However, there may never come that point where a child intrinsically decides that throwing a tantrum isn't worth a cookie.
  • soon2bhotmom
    soon2bhotmom Posts: 108 Member
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    I dont reward but I dont forbid treats either.
  • Willpowerofsteel
    Willpowerofsteel Posts: 20
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    I don't, but my kids' teachers do. My 3rd grader is always coming home with jolly ranchers, it is his teacher's way of rewarding kids who did all their work and behaved in class - they get a jolly rancher for each of those categories. So my kid almost always comes home with 2 jolly ranchers.

    I don't buy candy but with school rewards, valentine's day, Halloween, Christmas, and all the other occasions at school, they come home with so much!! Each one has a candy jar and we let them add candy to it whenever they get it, then we'll let them each choose a piece for dessert a few times per week.
  • breeanreyes
    breeanreyes Posts: 228 Member
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    I reward my children for living another year with cake.

    Bahahaha!
  • erogers85
    erogers85 Posts: 32
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    I am potty training my two year old right now, and yes, she gets rewarded with candy. It wasn't my idea. My daycare lady uses that method, and there is another little girl potty training right now along with my daughter- that little girl's mother also used the candy reward. Well, the first time my daughter went on the potty, she expected to get a treat the same as the other little girl... and so I got a phone call at work with my little girl in tears in the background because my daycare lady knows that my daughter is not allowed to have candy or sweets. And hearing my little girl crying because she doesn't understand why she's not getting a treat like the other little girl broke my heart. I figured I could very well make just as many hang-ups by forbidding candy as I could by using it as a reward. That's a tough one for me.

    I agree! I do not buy candy/ junk food for my kids, they eat the hippie vegetarian food cook at home- but if I were to make a huge deal out of someone serving kool-aid at a birthday party they attend I know this will become a much larger issue than it has to be! With parenting everything goes with a grain of salt...
  • ViSabbi
    ViSabbi Posts: 120 Member
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    There's a saying that I love and that goes like this: Why do you reward yourself with food, you are no dog. And well, when I will have kids, then I won't reward them with food either. It's like creating problems for the future.
  • becoming_a_new_me
    becoming_a_new_me Posts: 1,860 Member
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    It depends on what the situation is. My daughter is 11 so most of the time I just give her money since that is valued more. When she was younger pennies made her happy...now I need to give her dollars for the same effect. :grumble:
  • Bevkus
    Bevkus Posts: 274 Member
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    Food no...money YES!!
  • aSunflower
    aSunflower Posts: 73 Member
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    Yes!

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