Some “behaviour modification”-systems include rewards.
You give your child points for doing the right thing. And later, they can use their points towards a reward.
I don’t mind rewards and a bit of bribery, but I basically think every family member needs to do their bit of whatever it taks for the family to get along as nicely as possible. No special rewards should need to be paid. However: I do request rewards for my work.
If I make dinner, I demand Aspiekid to tell me how delicious it was, if it was. If it wasn’t, I still want to hear her express some gratitude for the time and effort it took. So, yes, rewarding is a large part of social interaction, also when not reduced to points and monetary equivalents to praise.
I decided to use a reward system.
We had a whiteboard with the current and next week on it, where we wrote down important stuff: One row for me, one for her.
So, I told her that for each day she did whatever it was back then that I needed to encourage her to do, I think it was to brush her teeth and get ready for school, I would draw a smiley on that day on her whiteboard calendar.
But what I felt was MORE important, for a whole bunch of reasons, was that I asked her to do the same for me.
She got to help me decide on the two most important things that I needed encouragement in improving.
So, every day, we went to the whiteboard and very briefly decided if we’d get our smileys or not.
I think these systems far to often are only directed from the parent to the child.
Doing it this way, if you don’t see the great reasons right away, are that it turns the thing into a kind of roleplay:
You will both understand it better. The feeling of getting someone decide what chores you are to perform, rate it, and reward you or not reward you, is something a lot of parents need to experience for themselves, rather than just exposing others to it. The act of deciding what actions are good for the family or the individual is a great way to get the grips of how the things you do effects others – and what to prioritize. If I remember correctly, the first task we gave me had to do with getting the table look nice and neat after breakfast. Being reciprocal is not just about doing things in a pedagogical way – it is simply a question of fairness. And, we need to face this: Our kids know us really well. If your kid decide she will rate you according to well you succeed in not yelling at her, you might learn things about yourself you decided not to know!
