He won’t use them, but these are better than unhealthy foods or bulky toys.
Similarly, expensive, harmless foods are fine too. I think stationeries are slightly more memorable.
usb fan too -> up in wardrobe
— approx ranking of best spend by/on boy for a $10
Even short-lived, ineffective effort is better than no effort.
Most of these require my time!
Which one for tgt/control and which one for long-term goal?
Out of the 3, only the bigger rewards can be canceled or postponed.
The “cash” reward can have diminishing value due to “drug resistance”. The kid often expects more next time.
TV is the primary reward. TV is like cash rewards for boy. Roughly $0.01 = 1 minute. Once a while, we can give him x hours of TV time as a lavish reward. Here are the immediate (or daily) rewards ranked by lavishness/extravagance:
The context:
For boy’s personality at his age, I feel the “motivation” concept is possibly oversold, as he shows limited/no sign of long term goals turning into action. Instead, Incentive is probably the correct name. At this stage, the regime we follow is target+control. Within it, the rewards are actually incentives.
Incentive is immediate; motivation is deeper and more internal.
There are a few real motivations we are working on
* wide range of interests
* ownership
* longer term, bigger rewards
Some long-term goals for adults
* a long term goal to hit a target body weight or flexibility (see an example target below)
* marathon or another fitness goal
* a part time certificate training course
* a long term goal to learn a musical instrument
* a long term goal to improve on coding interviews
* get into a better job
* immigration
* publish articles or a book
For my son, one of the long term goals is Chinese handwriting. I see he’s not yet able to set a target and make gradual and consistent progress towards it. Putting myself in his shoes, I can only *speculate* that such a target is perhaps too high and not perceived as achievable, so he’s perhaps not motivated to take any action.
Another Example — I set him a target to read aloud any 400-word Chinese piece with or without pinyin. There’s a big reward but it would take a few weeks of practice. He did absolutely nothing about it. Why? Grandpa felt this is normal for his age.
Similarly, I have the same sentiment about yoga. I have a deep rooted self-perception that I’m too tight and it would take 10+ years to hit a target like chest touching thigh. As a result I was completely /immobilized/. I found various excuses and refused to take any action whenever people suggested yoga. An unconscious self-protection against further disappointment. It took real courage to sign up and follow the yoga practice.
Sugg (See #3): find something easily achievable (tiptoe?) and ask him to do it by himself without prompting for a week. Attach a big reward.
Suppose your company pays quarterly bonus in the form of silver coins (or wines, or handbags…?).
If you have a lot of the same coins, you will not remember which coins are the company bonus, unless you record the amount of coins you receive each time.
My son get lots of rewards from trivial to big ones. If I want him to get the motivation, I need to remind him “that vacation was a reward for your effort in ..”. Otherwise naturally he is likely to assume those “good” things are unrelated to his good or bad actions. The cause/effect is not obvious to us until we are in our teens.
I feel a better type of target/reward is the inelastic yardstick, not subject to the parents’s whims. (Sometimes a yardstick on measurable effort is better than yardsticks on measurable output.)
eg: computerized tests — sometimes kid could even retest and monitor his own progress
eg: timer for copy-write
eg: School exams
eg: renzi – how many chars
eg: how many blogs
Target should be meaningful n significant, not piece of cake
Target should be not too hard. He won’t be motivated. Hard but achievable.
I don’t prefer school test targets. Mom would reward him for those anyways.
Ideally, achievement is measurable by himself, without parents’ judging.
Might build his confidence that “I-can do it.”
Target – 3 blog posts 10 sentence each
Target – spelling 100% correct
Target – making 10 sentences in Chinese
Rewards – tough. I can’t afford the time cost. May need to consider something slightly unhealthy (like ice cream…)…
* MRT trip to somewhere far
* train trip to Malaysia
* hotel stay one night like Downtown East (tcost)
* 2 movies on one weekend
* fancy restaurant (Salad bar)