• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

belgianwaffle

  • Home
  • About
  • Archives

End of an Era

28 October, 2013
Posted in: Boys, Daniel, Princess

When the Princess was a small girl, she used to hit people. Her grandmother, the psychologist, said it was much better to incentivise than to punish as, she observed wisely, “You run out of punishments.” So for many years, at the end of the Princess’s day, if she hadn’t hit someone she got a smiley face. Relatively early on this turned into a complete win for her as she didn’t hit people very often and every time she got five smiley faces she got a small present. Efforts to extend the smiley face criteria beyond physical violence to other forms of misbehaviour were largely unsuccessful due to the less definite descriptions of the fault and the consequent room for debate. In time, the regime was extended to her brothers.

Her involvement was phased out and replaced with pocket money of €5. In recent years, the boys are in her former situation, where physical violence is minimal and smiley face presents are many. Since the smiley face presents are almost always a magazine, we have recently negotiated with the boys that their smiley faces will be replaced by a subscription to the Beano. And just like that, a regime which has been going since 2007, at least, is over. On balance, the relief in not having to find smiley face presents makes it all worthwhile.

I hope that, in the absence of incentives, it doesn’t all return to primeval chaos here.

Primary Sidebar

Flickr Photos

More Photos
October 2013
M T W T F S S
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28293031  
« Sep   Nov »

Categories

  • Belgium (147)
  • Boys (983)
  • Cork (239)
  • Daniel (715)
  • Dublin (512)
  • Family (642)
  • Hodge (50)
  • Ireland (952)
  • Liffey Journal (7)
  • Michael (691)
  • Miscellaneous (71)
  • Mr. Waffle (670)
  • Princess (1,143)
  • Reading etc. (603)
  • Siblings (246)
  • The tale of Lazy Jack Silver (18)
  • Travel (220)
  • Work (204)

Subscribe via Email

Subscribe Share
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
© 2003–2025 belgianwaffle · Privacy Policy · Write