Tags
children, college, Gilmore Girls, incentive, kids, point of view, POV
Most children or teens have at one point thought the world revolved around them. Even more do not understand that there are two sides to every story, that not everyone thinks like them.
For example, in an episode of the Gilmore Girls, Rory and Lane discuss the difficult decision of what Rory should get her boyfriend Dean for a gift. Rory has bought a complex book by a Russian author (if I remember right). She explains she thinks it’s romantic. Lane compares the book to Dean giving Rory a Czechoslovakian football. She references a time that she gave her mother perfume for Christmas. To Lane, it meant, “here mom, you work hard; you deserve something nice.” To Lane’s mom is said, “here mom, here is some smelly sex juice, the kind I lure boys with,” and resulted in Lane being sent to Korean Bible camp.
The same thing can be said for incentives. Many teens cannot wait to get their driver’s license. I had to be bribed. But it is what my parents used to bribe me that is truly unique. If I did not get my license, I could not go to community college until after I graduated high school.
You read that right. I went to night classes at the community college for dual credit and my parents could no longer drive me. So, a week before I turned 18, I got my driver’s licence.
What unique incentives have people used on you? Did it work?
Ermilia 
At an early age I argued that as every object in the universe was receding from me I WAS, incontrovertibly, at its centre. I have never budged from that position since. It IS all about me, ultimately.
I think my own approach to this issue never included any bribery that I can remember. I like to think it was more subtle. For example instead of the old chestnut “I’ll start treating you like an adult when you start ACTING like one” I would say “I’ll start treating you like an adult when you start treating ME like one.” My other ploy was this – “My hope is that you will never come to me and tell me you wish you had listened to me”.
M
Oh you sound like you were an interesting child. 🙂 Thanks for sharing. My mom was a child discipline specialist, so any huge stubborn rebellion was squashed before it started.
I have been called many worse things than ‘interesting’. 🙂
Haha, I had a somewhat different argument. I said that the distance from me to the end of the universe in any direction was infinite and so therefore I was at its exact center.
When I was a teenager and wanted money to spend, it didn’t cost much for neighbours to have me scrub their floors or babysit their children. I regret that I didn’t charge more LOL Not really. Money was the incentive I guess. I wanted to buy things to look like the other girls at school. Funny thing is, even when I earned the money, I bought more record albums than anything else… music still moves me. Doesn’t take much incentive for me to get up and dance around the room. Right now I better dance to my pillow or it will be another tomorrow already. See you soon 🙂
Money was certainly an incentive for me to babysit as well, or rather what that money could buy. What kinds of record albums did you get? I was born too late to have much experience with records, but we have several Bill Cosby records and somewhere a record player that might still be able to play them. I hope you had a good dance with your pillow; I’m going to have to start using that expression now lol.
My father said he wouldn’t pay for college unless I earned a scholarship. I guess that’s not exactly unique. I can’t really say it was effective. I did work my butt off in school until I realized halfway through high school he never intended to pay for anything. I could have used a better understanding of scholarships. Anyway, I ended up working to pay my own way through college.
That’s a horrible incentive! (Not the scholarship part, but the part where he never intended to follow through because then you question other incentives.) I’m drowning in student loans. I owe my college my first born child for letting me spend a semester in Japan so I admire you for working to pay for college. I worked, and I still have insane loans. *Cries a little inside* What were some incentives that did work for you? Obviously you valued something about college enough to work to get it.
Life has a way of making incentives for you, you know, unless a lifetime of Ramen noodles and PBJ is an option. 🙂 Other than that, I think passion is really my only incentive. I do things because I love them.
Hahahaha, well said.