Today Ivy asked me if she could clean the mirror and this morning Peter asked me if he could clean his room. Yes, it's true, they asked if they could do work. Lately I've been stressed over how much time my kids spend in front of the tv or on the Wii or on the computer, but getting them off of these forms of media produced so much whining, that my tired illogical self would respond with yelling. Yesterday I started a new system and so far I'm loving it. They must earn their minutes to play on something electronic. (Not bike riding or coloring or reading) The thing is earning minutes is simple. 1) get dressed = 5 minutes 2) make bed = 5 minutes 3) brush teeth = 5 minutes, 4) do a job = negotiable. I keep a list of jobs for them if they use their minutes up and want to earn some more. And yep, I have them asking for work. I win both ways. They spend less time rotting their brains and they want to help.
I just put these little foam envelopes up and then when they do their specific chore I give them a little craft stick with the number of minutes that they earned on it. When they want to play they give me their craft stick and watch me set the timer so when the timer goes off for some reason they don't argue or whine. They know that their time is up.
We'll see how long it lasts. I suspect it may just be too good to be true.
7 comments:
That is pure genius! You're so smart!
I love it!! We will be using this one for sure. Thanks for sharing!
You are a genius!!! As long as it gets them to do the work I say go for it!
It should get you through the rest of the summer. Brilliant idea!
AWESOME! Now hopefully we won't have to run into that by starting out with it as our boys get older.
Oh my gosh...you are my newest idol! If I had kids, I'd be the first to implement this. How SO AWESOME ARE YOU!!!! and I already knew this!
Where has this idea been the last 4 years???? I am implementing it tomorrow!!!!! Thanks.
Post a Comment