Thursday, May 10, 2007

Shoot for the moon

You may recall that I have a chart system for behavior for my boys. They get a star for each daily task they are supposed to accomplish (getting up on time, cleaning their bedroom, a good report from school) and more stars for showing positive character attributes like being positive, being a peacemaker, and so on. For every five stars, they get a poker chip "token." They can also earn more tokens by helping around the house.

We have been doing the system for a little more than a year now. It was kind of petering out.

Then I restocked the treasure box. Oh, did I forget to tell you? The boys can use their tokens to purchase things from my treasure box. Mostly I have put little things in there -- stickers, gum, coloring books.

Yesterday I put in two DVDs and a Gameboy Advance game.

Suddenly the behavior is exemplary and all kinds of chores are getting done. This morning S cleaned the bathroom and folded a whole load of laundry.

This is something I have known for a long time and should have applied earlier. When we expect great things from our kids they will very often rise to our expectations.

Especially if it involves a Scooby Doo Gameboy game.

2 comments:

Tiffany Wacaser said...

Seriously, a great idea!!!! I've been looking for things to motivate my boys. Can they redeem their chips at any time??

Unknown said...

Nope, only at night after we read together. If it was at anytime they would seriously drive me nuts with it ...