Posted in School

Am I an awful mom for bribing my daughter to do her math?  Or for bribing my son to sit down to Language Arts with me?  I've discovered they'll do just about anything for butterscotch chips. 

Yesterday my 7-year-old daughter decided she'd rather read than do her math after lunch.  So my 5-year-old son gladly did his math while she read.  After dinner, when my husband sidetracked our toddler, I treated my daughter to her dessert over math, reminding her that she needed to be "deserving" to get dessert.  Then my son gladly sat down to have his turn with a Language Arts pretest where his reward was also butterscotch chips.  He did quite well, by the way, only having real difficulty with forming plurals of words ending in "y" and adding endings like "ed" and "ing" to short vowel words.  (He's working through the Alpha Omega placement tests a couple at a time to reveal what he's mastered or needs to learn before he can start Switched-on-Schoolhouse like his big sister uses.)

Today I was bold with my expectations of my daughter's math work - I printed out a review/diagnostic test, which she normally doesn't enjoy one bit.  Butterscotch chips work wonders.  Only once did I catch her doodling on her paper instead of doing the math - I can't say I blame her since the problems she was doodling around were simple addition and subtraction problems I know she could do in her sleep.  She didn't quite ace the test, but came very close.  I didn't even score it, since any score other than a perfect one sends her crying off to her room. 

Butterscotch chips can work miracles.  Well, maybe not quite, but they sure make some of the more mundane schoolwork easier to "swallow".