I find this thread interesting because I have kids and would like to know how to motivate them.
IMO, shul can be very boring for children. Chinch is important, and we want o expose them to what shul is, the structure and beauty of Shabbos davening….. But, IMO, if it’s not a shul that sings a lot, like a carlebach minyan, most kids would find it very boring…..
I personally don’t see anything wrong with what the parent did. Perhaps it’s because it worked, and if it didn’t we’d be having a very different discussion…
Children are very concrete: “put your money where your mouth is”…
The reward for shul is great. Oh, yeah? But, I have to wait 120 years to get it. To a kid, that’s a millennium. I get Aries point f view that skipping school may not be the best chinuch. I liked how R. Kaufman differentiated between reward and bribe. With even further elaboration from the OP, the fact that the reward is switched periodically (not to sacrifice learning) is even more convincing to me.
I really can’t imagine having a child walk 4+ miles to and from shul. Who can blame the child for not wanting to go?
So, I think rewards/bribes are ok, I agree that missing school isn’t great, but considering that it’s only occasional, don’t think it’s so terrible.
What do you do if you want to teach your child at a younger age to sit on shul and follow the davening, but they become disruptive and it bothers the other people davening. How do you handle that? How do you get your kids from a place of bringing them to shul to getting them to sit quietly in shul? I would love to hear how you’ve managed to transition them…