CHICAGO ---Call it a reward, or just “bribery(贿赂)”.
Whichever it is, many parents today readily admit to buying off their children, who get goodies(好东西) for anything from behaving in a restaurant to sleeping all night in their own beds.
That’s what worries parenting experts.
“I think that reward systems have a time and a place and work really well in certain situations,” says Marcy Safyer, director of the Adelphi University Institute for Parenting.
“But what often gets lost for people is being able to figure out how to communicate to their kids that doing the thing is rewarding enough,” Safyer says.
Parents and experts alike agree that the dynamic(动力) is partly a reflection of the world we live in. It’s unrealistic to think a parent wouldn’t reward their children with material things sometimes, says Robin Lanzi, a clinical psychologist and mother of four who’s the research director at the Center on Health and Education at Georgetown University.
“But you want to make sure that they match the behavior, so it’s not something huge for something small,” Lanzi says.
She recalls hearing about a father who offered his child a Nintendo Wii game system for scoring a couple goals in a soccer game.
Elizabeth Powell, a mother of two young daughters in Austin, Texas, knows what she means.
“You want to raise them in a way that they’re respectful and appreciate things,” Powell says of her children. “But sometimes, you wonder now if kids appreciate even a new pair of shoes. ”
小题1:Parenting experts are worried that ____ .
A．today’s children are fed up with material things
B．parents are rewarding their kids improperly
C．today’s children are more and more demanding(苛求的)
D．there is lack of communication between parents and children小题2:What Safyer says suggests that ____ .
A．reward systems are quite limited in developing abilities
B．reward systems work well regardless of（不管） time and place
C．reward systems are still not made full use of to develop abilities
D．reward systems are often used at the wrong time and place小题3:What can we learn from what Robin Lanzi says?
A．She holds a different opinion from other parenting experts.
B．She thinks children can’t behave well without being rewarded.
C．She holds a similar belief to Safyer and gives further explanation.
D．She doesn’t believe in rewarding children for good behavior.小题4:The father who offered his child a Nintendo Wii game system can be regarded as
_____.
A．over-rewarding his child
B．giving his child proper reward
C．respecting and appreciating his child
D．giving something small for something huge
