Ask HN: Do you pay your children for good grades?

NO

When I was younger my dad paid us. When I had kids I did not. When we were having our first child I thought back and realized a few key points from my childhood:

Giving a child an allowance, and making them pay for their WANTS from the allowance is the cheapest financial education.

Being involved in their education is the best motivator for good grades. Getting money was nice, but knowing my parents cared about education drove me to care.

To be involved means spending time EVERYDAY talking about their school and homework. Asking if they have homework is better than nothing, ask 'what is the homework' is better. Discussing the homework is best.

I would not pay my kids for grades, my parents kinda did this and in retrospective I came to conclusion it was not good incentive.

I personally don't like grades system, in my simplistic opinion it tought me to adjust to school system- I was memorising just enough to get a grade, then I was forgetting this because the only thing I cared for was grade and not actual skill or knowledge. I had to occasionally memorise/relearn stuff again. I also paid attention to what triggers my teachers so they notice me as good student, so I could occasionally get good grades just because they recognised me. This worked even at university. Now that I'm older I am 100% convinced how wrong this was. Instead of picking up skills and knowledge I was learning to game the system. I don't want my kids to be like me.

I send my kids to school where there are no literate grades until they are 13 (first 6 years). First three years they do 'work with help materials' and that's how they learn to read, write, count and some math basics. They learn this to acquire skill, not to get grades. Next 3 years they are continuing that pattern + they do projects in teams (where projects are very open-ended). This is the time where there is work they have to do, those tasks are marked as yellow. There are optional tasks marked orange and red but only kids who want them pick them up. During first 6 years teachers pay very close attention to what kids pick up and what do they avoid, so it's not possible to simply not do math just because you don't like it, or not write essays, teachers try to understand what are the blockers that make students to avoid picking these up and work with students to unblock them. Last 2 years they are introduced to grades because that's what highschool system here is based on (though, if I have good health and will be able to work I will send them to purely project-based highschool).

When I was a kid, I didn’t have an allowance, but negotiated with my parents to get $1 * Grade Level * A per report card.

Which, in retrospect wasn’t much per hour, but was a sufficient motivator to do well in the classes I didn’t care for.

When my grades started to matter for university admissions, they doubled the rate per A in grade 10 and tripled it in grades 11 and 12.

They made me save half and allowed me to spend half, which was a good lesson as it helped me pay cover a few unexpected expenses during undergrad.

Yes! Children love money, and it helps them feel like their efforts have a tangible reward that isn't "increase your chances of getting into Harvard 2% in 10 years". It's incredibly cheap for a working age adult, relatively speaking to the outcomes it can later produce - even $100 per A per semester is a huge motivator for a child who might otherwise reason that they can achieve their goals well enough with a couple of B's here and there. This is definitely what I reasoned when I was younger, and I would have loved a short term counterbalancing reward to give me more reason to push myself.

I also pay my wife, who is currently working through college. At her level the going rate we've negotiated is $250 for an A in her hardest, technical class, with exponential dropoff for lower grades (to simulate how small initial advantages lead to huge compounding effects in the business world). She's gotten the full amount almost every time so far :) but more importantly, she has chosen to put more of her limited pool of effort into those classes and less effort into classes neither of us really care about.

No definitely won't. I'll try my best to help him find something he loves to do for life, but I don't want to put money with study.

No. My 4 year old will bring up a book to me at 11 PM and force me to teach him how to read. My other child used to cry at 4 years old whenever she got second place, and that includes being the second person in the house to shower that morning. My eldest scores some of the highest grades in her school or district and that's mostly from us just giving her the resources she needs (books/tutors) when she's struggling with a subject.

My kids are already punishing themselves if they get an A. I feel like paying them for an A+ is just further punishment.

Sometimes we encourage them to enter competitions so they know it's okay to fail, as I want them to mentally fortify against failure as well.

I think it's important to celebrate though, just don't make it contractual. We normally take them out somewhere nice after exams are over. My daughter asked for overpriced pancakes, and she got really good grades that day, so we let her have the overpriced pancakes. They were not worth it (did I mention overpriced?), but it's the thought that matters.

I guess this is somewhat an american thing. Coming from southern europe, for me is a thing of everyone doing their role: Mom cooks, dad works, and childs approve everything with good grades.

For specific achievals (like really good performance) sometimes a prize has been discussed as an additional motivator, which has worked very well in the past.

My best friend was incentivised this way by his parents to learn a foreign language. We're talking about 30 years ago. At the time, I thought it sounded utterly ridiculous. Nowadays, he works as a schoolteacher, teaching that very language to kids in public schools. He has a PhD in it now. So, it all turned out rather well.

Some years I got paid for As ($1-5) and less for Bs. Anything less than a B meant you got nothing for the whole report card. Other years I didn't get paid. I think for my kids we won't pay them for grades, but might celebrate with a nice/ favorite dinner or something.

Yes,

$500 for an A, $250 for a B+

Kids are in middle school. The rate would be higher for high school. No, would not do this once they enter college.

My mom took to me a place that gave out a free cookie for every A. That was pretty good motivation for me.

Yes. Been doing this for years. Kids in middle school and in high school. Some were more incentivized than others. Did help with kid that was getting lower grades, to put more effort into studying.

$20 for an A, $10 for a B, C (-$5), D (-$10), F (-$20).

As in cash transfer from my wallet to theirs, NO.

That being said, if they continue to do well, saying Yes to their requests for things definitely is quicker.

No, we never did and never will. We encourage, praise and help but never put a value (money or other) on good grades.

Not really no. When they were younger, I would set up incentives though.

Now they're in high school and there's enough consequences (they're all in sports and can't play in games if their grades are bad) and I let them do their thing and occasionally remind them of consequences. Also, that trying and failing isn't necessarily bad and is often good.

It's better to let them learn about consequences/cause and effect without much of a safety net before adulthood.

My advice:

Encourage and celebrate your children in their success.

Console and support them in their struggles.

For they are children and you are the adult.

Good luck.

No, we never did. The thought never crossed our minds.

I think questions like this really just boil down to your temperament / philosophy as a parent, and your child's personality. I have a 7th-grader who I'm considering finally introducing payment for grades, because he's motivated to earn money, he's too young to work an entry-level job, and there's only so many chores he can do for his grandparents in exchange for cash (as per their arrangement).

Our time and effort is valuable, and should be rewarded! (parallels to adulthood)

Personal motivation is important to recognize and cultivate! (parallels to adulthood)

As for the idea that payment for grades is a perversion of the sanctity of study, I have somewhat heterodox views on the value of education in the first place; the schoolwork itself is rarely important, but doing the work is. Showing up, participating in earnest, and completing your assignments is important, however pointless the assignment is. (parallels to adulthood)

The actual letter grades don't matter to me as a parent, as either the content being taught is often arbitrary (or dictated from on high by bureaucrats making decisions based on a variety of irrelevant reasons, such as 'the district bought this software/coursework for the year' or 'it's in vogue to teach this in this way now' or 'that's the way it's always been'), or other circumstances may impact the tabulation of the grade (one class may assign a long list of tasks, graded 0-100 points out of maybe 2500 for the quarter, another class may assign half a dozen total tasks, graded 0-10 out of maybe 75 for the quarter ... the latter removing any ability to miss more than a point or two before your grade starts to swan dive, despite actually understanding the material)

IMO, learning should be a life-long pursuit, and learning to love learning for the sake of knowledge itself is paramount. Outside of attending college/university for specific reasons (desiring to be in academia, or studying medicine, law, mathematics, civil engineering, chemistry, or a scant few other subjects that require accreditation to enter the field), I don't have any expectations for him to attend or not attend. It should be a calculated, self-beneficial decision to go in the first place, and for many people who choose to go, it may be more advantageous to do it at 25 or 30 instead of immediately after high school. He'll figure it out. I'm supportive either way and here to guide when the time comes.

Besides, a 9th-grade A+ is a fleeting and ultimately irrelevant achievement; I say teach the kids work ethic, how to learn, how to think, how to recognize the constraints of a system, how to exist inside that system, and how to break the fuck right out of it if/when they so choose.

Ultimately, I encourage him to dive deep into whatever sets his brain ablaze, to not be afraid to fail over and over again as he builds skills and meets people, to be curious and diligent, and to enthusiastically pursue personal satisfaction and fulfillment over fearfully pursuing material externalities as dictated by society at large. A confident, competent person will be equipped to trade their time, knowledge and efforts for cold hard cash out in the real world, so why not just face reality and reinforce that with his current "job" (school)?

That said, if my kid had a different personality, I'd probably take a wildly different approach to all this stuff LOL so please don't take my advice at face value or assume that I'm even remotely close to being right about any of this stuff!!