I mentioned that I'm an inch short of being desperate to get Mila to give in and start reading, and that's exactly how it came to be that I decided I'd pay her to do it. There is NOTHING that kid won't do for a dollar or two. It makes no sense since she has no concept of money, can't tell you how much she has at any point in time, and doesn't know what things cost, but I take advantage of all of those things with much frequency. $0.10 per word it is! Redeemable only at the Carnegie Museums Gift Shop!
Hahahaha ... whoops? My plan really did work and Mila happily read about 30 words while we were there, but that's probably about as many as she COULD read there because it's a dinosaur museum hahahahalolz. There's a lot of big words spelled out on very tiny signs. Mila did use a fair amount of energy wandering to find words that she could potentially read, and even put effort into sounding things out, so I'll call it a victory even if I did sort of set her up for failure.
You can't really get anything at the gift shop for $3.
I didn't want to let the situation end in failure, so I ended up telling Mila she could pick a stuffed animal. She needs another stuffed animal like I need a hug (which is to say, NOT at all), but it's what she really wanted so whatever.
There was a catch, though. Since the kid had only read about 30 words, I decided she should have to read a book to me later in the evening and THEN I would trade her for the stuffed animal. Mila agreed to this plan and we got in line to pay.
And then Mila proved that she's a hell of a lot smarter than all of the rest of us. As we were standing in line, she noticed a wall of books. "What if I read you one of THOSE books?"
I'll be damned if the kid didn't con me into buying her a book AND a stuffed animal. She made good and did read the book to me, but it cost me $30 to get her to read maybe 200 words.
Okay, fine, it was worth it.
