So says a recent study, in which children aged four to six were offered small rewards for eating a vegetable they’d said they didn’t like. After three months, when the rewards were no longer being offered, most of those kids still voluntarily ate the vegetable in question. Children who’d received no incentive, for the most part, did not.
I could’ve told you that. Oh wait, I did. It’s been more than two months since we made that incentive chart, and Harry’s list of acceptable vegetables is still approximately 10,000 times larger than it was before we started. Dude eats corn, carrots, edamame, peas, lettuce, cucumber, celery, baby spinach, and green beans. Pre-chart, that list was nonexistent.
Lesson: Trust your instincts. If a small bribe seems like the kind of thing that might motivate your child to do something he otherwise would not, give it a try. I won’t tell.