More well-deserved attention for University of Chicago economist John List, whose research is the star of Chapter 3 of SuperFreakonomics and also featured in the last segment of the Freakonomics movie.
(Hemera)
Oliver Staley crafts a long piece that both describes some of List’s recent research endeavors and gives the reader a feel for his personality.
Like all economists, apparently, he has a story about potty training his kids:
List believes so strongly in incentives that he offers his own children lottery tickets to do extra math homework, he says. He promised a daughter a trip to Disney World in exchange for her becoming potty trained. The day he made the offer, she used the toilet and was trained, he says.
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I did the same with potty training, but for much less cost. Bought $10 worth of toys at the dollar store, wrapped them in wrapping paper, placed them on the mantle. Made a pyramid style chart, 1 pee=1 present, then 2 for a present, then so on.
Whew – for a minute there I thought “Economist John List” was a list of economists busted for prostitution, which seemed plausible given Freakonomics’ occasional profiles of the oldest profession.
My son was into Hot Wheels cars at the time, so I bought a big package of 50 or so Hot Wheels and he got one each time (until they ran out). It worked very well.
We do the same thing now with Magic cards. He was doing not-up-to-par work in school (but not because of lack of ability), so the teacher now gives him a Low/Medium/High rating each day on the quality of work. For a Medium he gets $1 toward Magic cards, and High gets him a pack. Previously, it was pretty consistently a Low, but now it’s always Medium and a High about once a week. Everyone is happy with this arrangement since we all got what we were looking for out of the arrangement and subsequent change.
Promised his kid a trip to Disney world for potty training! How old was the kid? 7 years old!!! A kid potty trained at 2.5 years, there is no way they understood what a trip to Disney world was at that age
When my son was two I offered him an M&M every time he used the potty. He went from diapers to completely potty trained in seven days.