What is it with bribing kids?

I sometimes bribe my kids for a quiet life but then I'm their dad so it's my preogative. I certainly wouldn't bribe them so often that I had to keep on giving or else they wouldn't do anything. Not so the government.

The British government are already bribing kids to stay at school by paying them for not leaving when they can. Rather than bribing them to stay, perhaps they should be offering some real incentives to stay on and achieve? Most kids can't afford to go to university because of the fees our friends to the north and west imposed on us. When I was still at school (I left about 12 years ago) I wasn't really encouraged to stay on. They went through the motions - careers advisor, college prospectus, etc. - but nobody actually sat me down when I was 13 or 14 and said "Look. You might not realise it yet but if you don't get a good education you're going to spend the rest of your life scrimping and saving while your friends who go to college and university are sunning it up on the Costa Del Loaded". I might not have taken any notice but who knows? Those that don't take any notice aren't really destined for much anyway are they?

Anyway, what prompted this is the governments announcement that they intend to provide teenagers with discount cards for shops if they are well behaved. Firstly, punishment and reward with kids is the job of parents and not the government. They already interfere in family life too much as it is and this is probably one of the reasons for the rise in hands off parenting where crap parents know they can be as crap as they want because the government will step in as a surrogate parent. Secondly, badly behaved kids won't respond to bribes - they'll just sneak around and not get caught. Kids aren't stupid, they're very cunning - something us adults tend to forget a little too often.

Habitually badly behaved children should be punished. The carrot and stick approach only works so far, as does positive reinforcement. Some children just have a predisposition to being naughty.

I have 4 kids - 7, 5, 3 and 1 years old. The eldest one is generally well behaved, academic and his only failing is that he's a gobby little bugger at times. The 5 year old is more "manual" than academic, he's not very gobby but he has a short temper and has a tendency to completely ignore you, literally as if you haven't spoken - it doesn't even register with him. The 3 year old is the spawn of satan. He is bad tempered, stubborn, defiant and naughty. The 1 year old so far seems to quite placide and cheerful.

The point is, my children have all been brought up the same by us as parents. The only difference being that until 4.5 years ago I wasn't the father of the eldest two and they have been through some really bad shit with their real dad. They are all completely different personalities despite being brought up the same way and bribing them won't change that. The only people who really know how to deal with their children is the parents themselves and it should fall to the parents to discipline and/or reward (bribe) their children and not the government.