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Ask yourself this question: On your deathbed, do you think you'll wish you would have worked more? made more money? or spent more time with your loved ones? I know I would choose the latter. Time is so much more important to a child than money. I guarantee you they will never forget the time you spent helping them with their school work. Throwing money at them to get good grades is like renegging on a fishing trip and saying "well, here kid, here's 50 bucks instead!" At the very least it's a slap in the face. We should be spending time with our kids, not throwing cash at them. In turn, they will spend time with their kids, and so on. That's a beautiful cycle to start.

When I was in middle school, there was a girl in my class who came in one day all excited because her mother had told her she would start paying her for good grades. I remember getting a sinking feeling in my stomache. I was only twelve or thirteen at the time, but somehow I knew instinctively that it wasn't right. She was running around telling all her friends about it, bragging about how she was going to make a boat-load of money. She was treating it like a game; her mother had challenged her and she was going to win.

Part of me was jealous; what kid wouldn't want money? Somehow though the feeling that pervaded my gut was akin to "Just Say No!" (the expression didn't exist at the time, but it sums up the feeling I had, perfectly.)

A couple weeks, and tests, later the unthinkable happened; She started cheating. It wasn't just a whisper here or an ink mark on the arm there, it was brazen cheating; she had cheat sheets and would openly turn to other students during tests and try to get answers. She had never done that before. What's worse is, there didn't seem to be any trace of hesitation, guilt or reservation in her actions - as if she didn't realize that what she was doing was immoral. She was on some kind of high.

The problem with cheating, with "going there," is that you cross a line and it's not easy to cross back (especially for a child). Once you experience "easy street," why would you want to jump back on to "reality street"?

There are many problems that might arise from using money as a motivator:

Kids might bully and threaten other kids to do their homework, to make money. kids may try and "work" or even threaten teachers when money is involved. When we're talking in the thousands of dollars, who's to say that kids and teachers won't be in cahouts? If the teacher gives a better grade, the

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