Economics and greed
I just saw an intersting post over on The Slacker Manager about greed, capitalism and children. Interesting comments, but I think the fear of creating a greedy little capitalist that the author worries about is baseless. His fear is that his son will come to expect a reward for every good deed. That isn’t what I see in children. They learn, especially as the rewards become fewer or less valuable, to internalize the good feeling they get when they get something. That internalization doesn’t continually require good things, presents or rewards to create the good feelings. It also doesn’t happen overnight in little children.
My wife has taken care of developmentally delayed and handicapped children for over 20 years. One of the children was about 5 years old and hadn’t gotten out of diapers yet. She was old enough, but didn’t appreciate the benefit of using the bathroom. She was very stubborn about this or any other discipline learning in part due to having been neglected by her parents for most of the first 5 years - “why pay attention to an adult now when they’d never payed sufficient or positive attention to me all this time?” One thing my wife noticed was that this child positively loved cranberry sauce. She still does 20 years later. My wife told her that she’d get a teaspoon of cranberry sauce if she went to the toilet in the right spot. Then it was most times, but not every time. Then it was only if the diapers were clean at the end of the day. Then it was only at Christmas and Thanksgiving with everyone else. The child, now 24, still uses the facilities. She doesn’t have accidents. And she still loves cranberry sauce. The internalization process of the gratification has taken place even in a person who has not matured to full adulthood and may never do so.
