Is It Okay to Bribe Your Kid to Go to Mental Health Treatment? What I Learned As A Parent
The rain streaks the passenger side window of my minivan, and my 12-year-old daughter Lila crosses her arms so tight her knuckles are white, staring at the brick therapist’s office in front of us. A half-eaten bag of Cheetos crunches under her sneakers, and the limited edition axolotl Squishmallow she’s begged me for three weeks is all I can think of. “If you go in to this session,” I blurt before I can overthink it, “we’ll stop at the toy store on the way home and get it.”
She uncrosses her arms, glares at me, and yanks the door handle. “Fine. But it’s not like I’m gonna talk about anything stupid.” She slams the door hard enough to make the side mirror shake, and I slump back in my seat, heart racing. All the parenting reels I’d binged that week played on repeat: Bribing kids teaches them to only work for rewards. Bribing is manipulation. You’re just setting yourself up for more bad behavior later. I’d spent three months trying every other trick to get Lila to this appointment. I’d told her about my own years of therapy for anxiety. I’d taken away her phone, given her extra screen time, let her pick the therapist. I’d cried in the bathroom after she had a panic attack before school and refused to get out of bed. I was out of tricks. So I bribed her.
What no one tells you before you have a kid who won’t get help is that sometimes the first goal isn’t to create perfect long-term habits. It’s just to get them through the door. Lila came out of that first session quieter than I expected, no yelling, no eye-rolling so hard she got a headache. We got the Squishmallow, she named him Water, and didn’t rant about how much she hated therapy on the drive home. The next week, when we pulled up to the office, she frowned and said she didn’t want to go. I offered a new incentive: four sessions in a row, and she could get the $25 watercolor set she’d spotted at the art supply store downtown. She agreed.
By the fourth session, she mentioned offhand that her therapist let her use the sand tray when she didn’t feel like talking. A month in, she started talking about what they discussed on the drive home: how they’d been working on breathing exercises for when her stomach hurts before tests. I stopped offering rewards automatically, but if she complained about going that morning, I’d throw out a small thing: after the session, we’ll get your favorite mango smoothie, or we can stop at the bookstore and you can pick out a new graphic novel.
I texted my sister, who’s a middle school counselor, that night after the first bribe, sure she’d tell me I messed up. Instead, she said something that stuck with me: most people get the difference between a bribe and a short-term incentive wrong. A bribe is what you do when you’re caught off guard at the grocery store and you promise candy to get them to stop screaming so you can check out. It’s for your convenience, not their growth. But a short-term incentive to get them over a scary first step? That’s just meeting them where they are.
Over the past six months, I’ve talked to three other moms in my neighborhood whose kids also started therapy recently, and all of us have done some version of this. One does extra Minecraft time after sessions. Another takes her son for tacos after every appointment. None of us brag about it, because we’ve all heard how bad bribes are. But it works, for us.
The practical part that I wish someone had told me before I tried this: don’t make the rewards big or permanent. I never would have promised Lila a new phone for a year of therapy—that’s too much, impossible to follow through, and it makes the reward the whole point instead of feeling better. Keep it small, immediate, and tied to the thing you’re asking them to do. It can be something they already want, not something you have to come up with from scratch.
Also, be honest about why you’re offering it. Don’t hide it or act like it’s just a random treat. I said to Lila the first time, straight out: “I know this is really scary. I wouldn’t make you do this if I didn’t see how much that panicky feeling in your chest is messing up the stuff you want to do. It takes a lot of bravery to show up when you’re this scared, so I want to give you something good for trying.” No fancy talk, no lying. That takes away the manipulation piece, because everyone knows what’s going on.
And phase them out slowly, don’t yank them away suddenly once they start going. After a couple months, I just asked Lila one day, “Do you still want me to do the reward thing when you go to therapy, or is it okay if we stop?” She thought for a minute, then said, “We can still get ice cream most weeks, okay? It’s nice to have something fun after.” That was fine with me. No pressure to be perfect right away.
Last week, we pulled up to the office, and Lila stuffed her sketchbook in her bag and said, “Remember when you had to buy me that stupid Squishmallow to get me to come here?” I laughed and said, “Do you still think that was stupid?” She rolled her eyes, the normal kind not the angry kind, and said, “No. It was dumb to be that scared, but whatever. Thanks for making me go.” She got out of the car and headed in, Water the Squishmallow sitting on her nightstand at home.
I still don’t tell every parent I do this. A lot of people give me that look when I mention it, the one that says you’re doing it wrong. I know it’s not the perfect, textbook approach. But Lila’s panic attacks don’t hit as hard anymore. She hangs out with her friends on the weekends again. She passed her last math test. Some days are still hard, and some weeks she still doesn’t want to go, and we still get ice cream after when she pushes through. It’s not a neat, fixed ending. It’s just working, right now, for us. And that’s enough.
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