A few days ago a local news website posted an article that showed most parents admit to bribing their children. I can't say I'm totally shocked by this, nor does it make me shake my head and say loudly and sarcastically "why parent when you can buy your kids' love?" I imagine that bribing a child is probably a delightful alternative to, say, locking them in their bedrooms with nothing but financial planning books and SAT test guides until they're old enough to not legally be your problem anymore. I also think that this article needed to be a bit more specific on what they deemed "bribery." See, to me, saying "get your towel off the floor or you will be eating it for dinner" is a form of bribery, only brilliantly and cleverly disguised. You are bribing your child with a nice nutritional meal for picking up after themselves.

I realize not everyone would see it that way, and some would argue that feeding a towel to a pre-teen is a borderline form of child abuse, even if it was one of those expensive giant cottony ones. I sort of disagree. If cooking bland, tasteless dinners was a form of abuse, they would have shut down "The Winking Lizard" years ago.

I guess I sort of look at bribery in the way a kid named Brett from my high school physics class described entropy. He defined it like this (please be aware that this is a crappily remembered paraphrase): "even if the universe is always shifting towards chaos, you could argue that those shifts themselves are a type of order. For example, my socks are in order because I keep them in my dresser drawer and not all over my room. But if I have one sock on the bed and one sock in the hall, you could say it's still order because they're still in the house. Now, sometimes I...." At this point Brett was shut up by the teacher, who didn't like the direction the conversation had taken. Brett later went on to be the only person ever to score 100% on some test given by NASA, so I don't think anyone can argue with his reasoning.

I think that lovely little example fits parenting, since I believe you can argue that any parenting at all is in some way a form of bribery. Oh, sure, you wussies out there could argue that operant conditioning is nothing more than a form of behavioral modification based on "reinforcement" as follows:
Positive reinforcement: giving a stimuli to a subject-giving a cookie
Negative reinforcement: removing an unpleasant stimuli-stopping nagging
Positive punishment: applying a negative stimuli-spanking, or telling a long winded "moral" story that begins "back when I was your age..." causing the subject to wish you'd just slap him on the ass and get it over with (my dad liked to use the Grandpa Simpson style stories on me)
Negative Punishment: removing a favorable treat of some sort, such as taking away your four year old's cell phone.

How are none of these bribery? ESPECIALLY positive reinforcement! You're not just extending curfew there, buster brown, you're currying favors. Buying a behavioral contract, if you will.

Since behavioral conditioning is necessary for discipline (which seems like common sense, but to judge from the kids in Lorain County, probably isn't), then bribery is necessary to keep the little sticky fingered snot nosed brats in place.

Therefore, why is NewsNet5 wringing their hands and crying "whatever will we do with these parents who bribe their children?"

We will give them applause. At least they know where their children are. They're sitting there with their hands out, waiting for $5, so they can buy their cigarettes with their fake IDs instead of going to the hassle to actually steal them. Duh!

Man, I really wish someone would bribe me to do something, too. I could really go for some free pie or $5 or something. Those darn kids get all the breaks.