Have you ever bribed your kids to get them to do something? Of course, we all have. Tonight the issue was reading. My son hates to read. His least favorite class is English. He has a book to read and an essay to write. A book report essentially. He brought the book home, which he has already started, but of course it stayed in his book bag all day Saturday. Sunday we made him sit for an hour and read, with a two-hour break to play, and then another hour or so of reading until dinner time. So he thinks he’s finally done reading and dinner’s not ready yet.  Knowing how easy it is for him to procrastinate we wanted him to get a little farther in the book so that he has plenty of time to work on the paper.

So what was the bribe tonight? A couple games of chess after dinner.

Sometimes it’s the simple things that work.