My son gets poker chips. He loves them, and he loves playing with them, keeping them in a special box, taking them out and tallying them up, and being able to look at what he’s accomplished. He gets a white chip for every task he completes, and he can exchange five white chips for a red chip. He can exchange a red chip for a quarter, two for a ride some place that isn’t part of his regular routine, but something special (he has to ask in advance, and it has to fit our schedule), or save them and exchange five red for a blue. If he save lots of blue chips, he can trade them in for all sorts of things, like a ticket to a movie, plus popcorn and a drink. He has to save a lot of blue chips for really good stuff, but he managed to save enough for a trip to this fancy indoor water park in town, with really high slides, and all kinds of things. We always post the exchange rates ahead of time, so he can work toward things. Sometimes he asks for extra chores because he is saving up for something.
He’s not actually getting a lot per chore (it’s 5 cents if he cashes out), but it motivates him all the same. As he’s gotten older, and capable of bigger things, he’d actually gotten to do some chores I’ve given him more than one chip for, like changing the cat litter-- I gave him a whole red chip for that, and he almost hit the ceiling.
A box of poker chips costs only a few dollars, and it was well worth it.
Task charts are a great tool - they help kids figure out what they need to be doing, and get their thoughts organised. Rewards are quite unnecessary. All you need are activities they need your help/permission with, and the magic words “Sure. But first did you…”
“Daddy, will you take us to the park?”
“Sure. But first, did you do your music practise?”
“Daddy, can we play on computers?”
“Sure. But first, did you Do All The Things for getting ready for school?”
Thank you all for the replies. They’ve certainly given me a lot to think about.
I anticipated that there would be pushback from some about rewarding kids.
Let me provide a little more background. I grew up in an extremely abusive household where we did out chores or would get the living shit beaten out of us. I cannot recall ever getting a special reward for anything, doing either normal things or extra stuff.
We sometimes got beaten up for doing chores but getting something wrong. A classic example was when I was six or seven and accidentally gave my father the wrong size spoon for breakfast on a day we had cereal rather than the normal eggs and got one of the worse beatings / kickings / getting thrown around the room that I was ever on the receiving side of.
My father was on the extreme edge of authoritarian parenting even back in the standards of the 60s and 70s. He had no other tools in dealing with children.
Another time, for some reason my other brother thought that it would be cool to wax my father’s car without being asked. All of us pitched in and had it completed by the time he was back from work. He did acknowledge it without a smile, but the next day made me, and only me, go out and wipe all the extra wax from places we had missed.
I could bore you with all the parenting mistakes and abuse, but I presume you can get the picture. All of us kids would up with substantial mental or emotional issues from growing up there.
I’m really trying to parent differently. Our kids know that their parents love them, protect them and that home is a place of safety. With only negative role models to go by, I’m trying my best to get things rights.
I’ll screw up, I know. No parent is perfect and even parent who had loving, non-psychotic and not abusive parents will make mistakes, but those of us who [del]grew up[/del] survived somehow in hell will make more. My goal is to lessen the secondary damage.
So, our house isn’t Leave it to Beaver. Fuck it, I’m doing what I can. I’m also very consciously not going overboard with excess permissiveness and unaccountability. The opposite of craziness in one direction isn’t craziness in another.
My point is that rather than beat the kids or get them to simply get away with nothing, I’m trying various age appropriate methods to help them find motivation, and the suggestion of grounding for not doing tasks is completely wrong for a five-year-old.
I’m not apologizing for trying, nor will accept condemnation from someone when it was never necessary for her to been taken as a five-year-old to the ER to mend the results of the punishment of a normal act of a child. Fuck that.
We did Treasure Bag. The “treasure” was pure junk - little plastic objects designed to be handed out in party favor bags, cute erasers, little bottles of bubble bath, really cheap matchbox type cars, etc. Treasure wasn’t given every time chores were done, but it would only be given on days when chores were done. It was a really good motivator for a year or so, and that was long enough to establish good habits.
I’m young enough to have grown up with the poker chip system. Worked out fine ( until my grandmother moved in and sabotaged the whole experiment). Even some adults set little goals and reward themselves for achieving them.
I was raised old school and never expected–nor received–rewards for doing chores, getting good grades, or staying out of trouble. So some of this foreign to me.
That said, the OP asked how to keep up his system, so enough about me. I can definitely see how sustainability in the longterm could be an issue. It is natural for rewards to lose value as their novelty fades; to maintain their power as incentives, you will have to increase the size of the carrot over time. Which means more work for you, to be honest.
Perhaps consider making the reward something less immediate, so the kids learn to delay gratification and start working toward bigger goals? So instead of getting dessert for cleaning their room one weekend, you might promise them a trip to a water park this summer if they remember to clean their rooms every weekend between now and when school lets out. Every week you can keep track of their compliance with stars or whatever, which will give them the acknowledgement they need to stay motivated. But with the water park as the real prize, you’re rewarding them for sustained performance of duties. Not just for doing something one time.
Aren’t (nearly) all children sociopathic assholes, at least at some stage in their development? It’s our job as parents to try to steer them away from this (please note I am in no way criticising your parenting, just speaking in general terms). Our two year-old is currently amazingly helpful most of the time, and actively enjoys things like having his teeth brushed, but I’m well aware this is likely to change at some point and then we will probably go for some sort of rewards system, so this thread has been very helpful.
OK, my reply was over-the-top, and I apologize. I do get defensive when people talk about “parents these days” because I grew up in an – excessively – authoritarian environment which was psychologically damaging. Some parents get really lucky and have kids which are fairly compliant and easy going.
As my sister observed, there’s nothing more satisfying, in a horrible sense of the word, than having been on the receiving end of lectures on parenting from a person who had a “good” child, and then watched that person’s second child turn out completely different.
If we had stopped with our daughter, Beta-chan, I would have forever thought that I was an exceptionally gifted because damn near anything I tried worked.
The laugh was on me when her younger brother who simply ignores all those neat tricks I learned the first time around.
Anyway, back to the charts.
I look at the task chart as a temporary measure to help teach them. I hope we’re not having the same problems when they’re teenagers, but anticipate other issues, since kids will be kids.
I do want to thank people for reminding me about rewarding with food.
Beta-chan has been really excited about this, and getting the charts marked is all it takes for now. My son is less so, but it’s a good way to help him remember what to do, since he’s only five.