Is Bribing Your Kid to Go to Mental Health Treatment Ever Okay?
The rain was streaking our front door glass last September when my 14-year-old Lila planted her feet by the shoe rack and said she wasn’t getting in the car. My coffee was going cold in one hand, a crumpled granola bar from last night’s after-soccer practice sat on the counter behind me, and we were 10 minutes late to her first ever therapy appointment. I’d already tried every trick I found online: I let her pick the therapist (she went with the one who listed indie folk and rescue cats in her bio), I promised she didn’t have to talk about anything she didn’t want to, I even said I’d wait outside and not ask any questions after unless she brought it up first. None of it worked. Lila crossed her arms and said therapists just make you feel weird for being sad, and she wasn’t going. That’s when I blurted it out: If you go to four appointments, I’ll buy you the Sony wireless earbuds you’ve been staring at online for two months.
Lila blinked, then said, “Four, not six. And I get them as soon as the fourth is done. No ifs, ands, or buts.” I said deal. She grabbed her jacket and got in the car. I sat there for an extra minute in the driveway after she went in, feeling like the worst parent alive. I’d read a dozen parenting posts that week saying bribes kill intrinsic motivation, that you should never reward a kid for doing something that’s good for them, that this just sets them up to expect payment for every hard thing. I texted my sister, who’s a 7th grade teacher, and she just wrote back that she gives her kids candy for turning in assignments on time at the start of the year, so who’s she to judge. That didn’t make me feel much better.
First session, Lila came out chewing gum the therapist gave her, said it wasn’t as bad as she thought, she just answered a bunch of questions. Second, she mentioned they did this breathing thing she does when her chest gets tight before school. Third, she told me she talked about how mad she gets that I work late three nights a week, and the therapist didn’t tell her I was right or she was wrong, just listened. After the fourth, I ordered the earbuds that night, had them delivered two days later. She unboxed them on the kitchen table, didn’t make a big deal out of it, just put them in and went to her room. That was that, I thought. She’d got her reward, now she’d quit.
Two weeks later, she grabbed her bag after dinner on Wednesday and said she was leaving for therapy. I said, “Wait, we didn’t talk about another appointment,” and she just shrugged and said “I know, I texted Dr. Mia last week to set it up. It’s fine.” I didn’t offer another bribe. She didn’t ask for one.
I’ve thought a lot about this since then, because the question I see everywhere is why can’t kids just do the hard things for their own good? The thing no one talks about is that for a kid who’s never been to therapy, it’s not just a hard thing—it’s a scary unknown. Lila had heard from her friend that therapy is where you go if you’re “broken,” she was convinced I’d sent her there to change all the things she thought were wrong with her. There was no way she was going to feel motivated to go until she found out that wasn’t true. Motivation doesn’t show up before you do the thing, most of the time. It shows up after you’ve done it enough to see it works.
I don’t think this works the same way for every kid, but there are a few things I did that I’d do again. First, I locked in the terms before we started, no moving the goalposts. I didn’t say “if you behave” or “if you open up enough,” I said four appointments, you show up, you get the reward, no strings. You can sit in the corner and scroll your phone the whole time, it still counts. That took all the pressure off, which I think made Lila less defensive from the start. Second, I picked something she actually cared about, not something I thought she should want. I didn’t offer a new backpack or a trip to the zoo, I offered the exact thing she’d been saving her allowance for for two months. Third, I didn’t frame it as a reward for being “good,” I framed it as a trade for doing a scary thing. I said “I know this is really scary, and I’m asking you to try something that feels awful. This is my end of the deal for trying it.”
I know the common argument against this. A mom at Lila’s soccer practice heard me tell this story a couple weeks ago and said she’d never do that, because it teaches kids they should get paid to take care of themselves. Maybe she’s right, in some abstract long-term way. But what was the alternative? Lila was throwing up before school every other week from panic attacks, she’d stopped hanging out with her best friend, she’d spend 12 hours straight in her room with the door locked on weekends. Waiting around for her to suddenly decide she wanted to go to therapy could have meant waiting months, or longer, while things got worse.
Last week, Lila asked if she could switch to every other week for therapy, because her algebra workload picked up and she doesn’t want to give up her after-school study time. I told her that’s entirely her call. Her earbuds still work, she uses them every day on the walk to school. I still don’t know if what I did counts as good parenting, if the experts would approve. But I know she doesn’t throw up before school anymore. She asks to get ice cream with her friend every weekend now. Some days she even comes out of her room to watch a silly competition show with me after dinner, instead of shutting the door. That’s enough for me, right now.
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