Reward Chart or Cane: Carrot and Stick

Primary Three. Ewan, this is your first year coming head to head with tests and exams. All of a sudden, it isn't just understanding concepts. It is time you translate what you've learnt into papers with questions and tricky options. Against a ticking clock.

His results are back for all four subjects and I am indeed proud of what he had achieved. Him doing well shows mommy had been a good tutor no? *haha* Back to crediting me again. He could have done a lot better in Math should he had checked more thoroughly. So let us recount: if he hadn't commit any careless mistakes, he would have gotten 98/100. That meant I have to look beyond the results and applaud the fact that he understood his concepts. So hey! That is great results! Gosh.. parenting...  

I always say, "I'm okay with you losing marks on questions you do not know. But I cannot tolerate careless mistakes. It just goes to show not enough effort had been put into it. And EFFORT to me, and to you, should be Everything."

With maturity, I saw my son morphing into this different boy who saw the correlation between Hard Work and Pay Offs. The joy of receiving a paper which reads 100/100 and the shock of 52/100 which he then affirmed himself with, "It is still a pass!" *hahaha*

Looking at all the crosses from his careless mistakes is the bane of [more of mommy's] life. Isn't doing Corrections punishment enough? Apparently not because he can say things like, "It's alright I don't mind doing corrections." Is that true? Not always. Sometimes he grumbles to tears when he had to re-do all his problem sums again because he simply cannot number transfer accurately. Speed Reading [like speeding on the road] Kills. 

I decided to punish carelessness with "For every one mistake you make, you do an extra page of Math." Even so, I felt bad. I felt unsure if that would make him detest the subject or help him check his work before submission. We tried and it sure was punishing. I didn't follow through though because it took up So Much Time! I did not want to rob his after-school play time off him too and resorted to nagging and voice-raising instead.  

Ewan came home this year suggesting a Reward Chart for Spelling and 听写 because he carelessly makes mistakes by omitting words in sentences too. I told him I cannot agree because I do not see why grades should be rewarded. Wouldn't I be emphasising on the importance of grades over Doing One's Best? We've never done so in Primary One nor Two. Why Three?

He shared that his friends get it from their parents and he likes the idea so that he can redeem the stars for prizes. Maybe he might make less mistakes if driven by a reward. He wanted to collect Stars from me to go for an hour's play at Hydrodash with the family. Would rewarding him with a family experience be more justifiable than a tangible something? 

I was torn. By doing so, I will be removing the intrinsic motivation in him. Question here now is, does he have the intrinsic motivation to study in the first place? Like the child I once was, between Play and Work, of course I'd choose Play. 

I did study Child Psychology for a while and I understand the dangers of rewarding for the wrong reasons. His daddy told me to not overthink. Just do this Reward Chart since he wants it and see where it takes us. Instead of rewarding grades pe se, I reward stars based on mistakes because after all, I really just want to eradicate careless mistakes. 1 mistake five stars, 2 mistakes four stars, so on and so forth. Irony is, although the explanation is different [back to front] but eventually, it's the same as rewarding stars for grades isn't it? Because if he gets all correct, he gets a Full House of Stars!

*sigh*

I can never find the right balance or answer in Parenting. 

That got me asking his Math teacher on how we can work together to help him commit less careless mistakes. He usually rushes through his class work so that he has time to read his storybook. That rush costed him with more corrections. I suggested maybe we could remove reading time from him at school. With the extra time left in the period, he has no choice but to do it slowly and steadily + checking for mistakes. 

His Math teacher shared that this could be an idea to explore but also suggested a Reward System to celebrate accurate work. Slowly working towards lesser and lesser mistakes. She did not suggest to reward with a tangible item. It could simply mean verbal celebrations. It could be rewarding him by doing one less question. But naturally, we all see the tangibles don't we? It is up to me to decide how the Reward should be awarded.

I shared this with my dad and he replied with the most epic and relatable answer. 

Actually, I do understand both his teacher and my dad’s point of view. 

On caning, I do feel it’s old school and agree it could be necessary. It is so true that our society does not reward failures but is that an old system we should be relooking into? The Reward to Failure is We Learn How To Stand Up When We Fall! From there, we succeed.

Although Ewan had been asking me to cane him so that, in his own words, "I will learn." I don’t think I will subscribe to the cane because he is all of eight years old now. If he cannot understand reasoning, I will have to reason in a different method with the choice of words I use.

Maybe marrying carrot and stick is a better idea than just pure carrot or pure stick? Taking both their suggestions into consideration without using the cane, I shall stick to coming up with a solution by discussing with Ewan on what he thinks will help him most to number transfer correctly and not see his 6 as 0 because he writes so untidily.

This Spelling and 听写 Reward Chart is working well. Even Faye wants to come on board. She who cries and throw tantrums almost every time we practice is clocking Stars like a champ! She does not like to practice and thus she cries. Yet on the other hand, she wants to claim her prize of a visit to the Zoo. She decided to work for it. *sigh* I still feel it is wrong to work towards a prize other than finding joy in your own results. The results should be prize enough. But but but...

Doesn't sound like I came to a conclusion with this post. 

The only conclusion I have is, Parenting is such a steep learning curve and Trial and Error seems to be a fundamental method!

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