My 4-year old daughter sees my wife cutting our 1-year-old’s nails and asks, “Daddy, are my nails long?”
But that’s not what she’s really asking…
She’s really asking if she can watch a YouTube video. Huh? What? We’ll get there.
Let’s talk about bundling. I was first introduced to this concept years ago when reading Predictably Irrational, a book about behavioral economics. Who knew humans weren’t perfectly optimized machines and were prone to irrational behavior? I digress.
Bundling or “temptation bundling” was a way to get yourself to do something you should do by bundling it with a temptation. Want to watch your favorite Netflix show? Bundle it with getting on the treadmill. If you only get to watch that show when working out, you may start looking forward to working out.
It works. In 2014, Katherine Milkman published a research paper about the topic (linked for those who like reading that sort of stuff, though I’m partial to this Freakonomics podcast.)
So my wife and I have employed a version of bundling with our children: take something we need to do and bundle it with something that our child wants to do.
Our need: cut our daughter’s finger nails
Child’s want: watch videos
Every time we clip our daughter’s finger nails (about one-time per week), we let her watch a short YouTube video on one of our phones—our go to is usually CocoMelon—and she’s incredibly cooperative throughout the entire process.
Our daughter now looks forward to having her nails clipped (and getting her temperature taken the “more accurate way”).
We don’t yet have a good solution for clipping our 1-year-old’s nails though, so I welcome your ideas.