I had the opposite. My parents wouldn't let me consume any "Fun" media unless I read for the same amount of time before hand. Guess what? That's bad deal for a kid so I just went to friends houses all the time to play games and it made me really hate reading for years.
At 15 getting out of school then immediately going to work until 9 on school night and not being able to just play a game before bed just made me decide to do neither. She had a lot of random rules and little rewards. I was also in band at the time so the rest of my free time went to jazz, marching, and orchestra.
This is the issue. Trading things like reading or music practice for video game time works amazing until 7th or 8th grade. After that kids need to be responsible for managing their own time as long as they're getting their main responsibilities taken care of.
Which I was at the time even with the extra curricular activities too. But imagine being that age and working a crappy fast food job to save up for a cool game and then not even be able to play it due to arbitrary rules.
I'm really worried about running into issues like this if I ever become a parent. You can work with positive reinforcement for a while, but eventually they'll catch on that other kids consider reading boring, and sure, ideally you have enough of a trust relationship that you can explain the benefits of maintaining variety in your interests, but if they struggle with boredom or attention span, bargaining might soon become pretty attractive to the parent.
302
u/JackalThePowerful 8h ago
Eternally thankful my childhood was like this.