Dad's parenting tactic to get his son reading has left people seriously divided

Parenting is just one of those things that everybody has an opinion on and everybody thinks "their way is the right way".

However, one father has left Twitter seriously divided after he revealed that he pays his son $1 for every book he reads cover-to-cover.

Doting dad David Woodland took to Twitter to explain: "We pay my oldest $1 every time he reads a book. We’re talking 160-page chapter books.

"I'm out $120 this year and he thinks he’s ripping me off. Best investment ever."

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In another tweet, David added: "The second trick is: he has a strict bedtime, but can stay up late if he is reading books."

And Woodland's incentive to get his son reading more certainly impressed a lot of Twitter users, with the original post amassing over 44.2K retweets and comments, and 498.6K likes.

One parent even replied saying: "We do the same thing for my 6yo since COVID started in March. Since she can’t go to the store, she’s allowed to shop on Amazon once she’s over $10. She’s read around 40 books since March and she went from a 1st grade reading level to 5th grade. Totally worth it!"

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However, not everybody was supportive of the parenting tactic, and David was met with a fair share of criticism.

One Twitter user responded by saying: "I just heard an NPR podcast today that talked about the idea of paying kids to do things they should be doing anyway. It is a topic that's been studied, basically it removes the motivation to do the task. So once you stop paying them, they won't do it anymore."

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And another strong critic commented saying: "You'll be out a lot more for his therapy.

"I've got 4 kids (15 through 4, the older 3 doing amazing in school etc.) and this is a horrible idea that teaches really bad incentives.

"Hope this doesn't backfire and bite you guys in the behind."

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And a third replied saying: "THIS IS A HORRIBLE IDEA! DONT EVER DO THIS" - along with a snippet of a Princeton paper by Roland Benabou and Jean Tirole that stated:

"We reconcile these two views, showing how performance incentives offered by an informed principal (manager, teacher, parent) can adversely impact an agent’s (worker, child) perception of the task, or of his own abilities. Incentives are then only weak reinforcers in the short run, and negative reinforcers in the long run."

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However, unperturbed by the nay-sayers, David once again posted in the thread, calmly explaining: "Didn’t realize 'encouraging reading' could be such a controversial topic, so I’ll end on this:

"He's a great kid and thrives in academics and sports. More importantly, he is a loving older brother/friend/son.

"I am proud to be his dad. Don’t worry about my kid! He will be okay!"

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Personally, I don't think $1 is enough to transform David's son into some sort of money-grabbing corporate zombie. And his achievement of reading 120 books really is something to be proud of - just think of how well he is not only developing his reading skills, but also learning from that many books.

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David, keep up the good work!