Benevolent Manipulation

At our school we have a tradition each fall of giving another member of our community a "gift of words," celebrating who they are and what they mean to us. I've been gifted with a few excellent titles over the years, including  Papa Hawk, Space-flying Peregrine Falcon, and Keeper of Potlatch who Breaks its Spirit, among others. Typically, along with giving you a new name, the giver will write a poem of some sort. Several years back, another teacher made this cool little leather bag and filled it with different words. She called it my "bag of tricks." It was a pretty neat gift.

A "gift of words" 

I was a bit flattered as I read them, one by one. Creative. Leader. Inquisitive. Flattered, until I got to looking at it in more detail... Cunning. Calculating. Unpredictable. Manipulative. 

Yikes. Am I really manipulative? Am I viewed that way by other folks? Well, I suppose that teacher added least one data point for that question. And, yes, I suppose that I've been known to pressure friends into coming out to have a great time when they "needed to work." And, yes, I suppose that I can enthrall a cabin full of campers with stupid stories and build team unity using chants and nicknames. It's something I do on purpose; and at its root I think it really is manipulative.

Which got me to thinking. Manipulation is simply getting people to do what you want them to do. As a teacher, I manipulate my students into behaving respectfully in the classroom and learning the skills that I'm presenting, through a combination of carrots and sticks. As a parent, I'm trying to raise my kids to be responsible, contributing, intelligent, kind, productive adults. I do this through a mixture of praise and corrective action, through benevolent manipulation.

After my last post, I had a chance to discuss allowances/chores with several other parents. We all have many of the same goals. We want to teach our children to be good stewards of their resources. We want our children to learn to value hard work. Perhaps most especially we don't want to have to follow behind them or nag them to get their work done. We want them to take initiative.

 

With those goals in mind, I put together a chore chart in Google Drive in order to benevolently manipulate my kids. Each day the kids have until just before dinner to take care of their responsibilities and check them off on their sheet. We do a quick walk through and verify that they've taken care of them. For any chores that got done without our input, the child gets a check. If they haven't gotten the job done, they have to do it after dinner, but without earning a check. At the end of the month, we will tally up their checks and pay them accordingly. If you do 80% of your work without needing to be told to do it, you'll get your standard allowance. 95%+ will get you a $5 bonus. Less than 70% will mean you don't get paid. We are only about a week into this, and there are already some disparities between our kids becoming really clear.

One of our kids is a real self-starter. She has only missed a single check so far and is on par to his the 95%, and will likely earn a $5 bonus for her excellent work.

Another kiddo is hitting at about 50%. At this point, she's on par to not earn any allowance this month. I think there will be some tears on September 30th. Maybe there will be a change in her effort in October.

Our final girl is probably at the 75-80% mark. She will likely earn her standard allowance. I hope to see this system encourage her to mature a bit and develop the good habit of working first, playing later. We'll see!

If you're interested in trying something like this out, here's a link to the file. Feel free to customize, and let me know how it goes! Maybe someone out there can Pinterest it up a little bit and make it look like something kids would like instead of a dad's spreadsheet. =)