Incentive Plans
Life here has gotten busy. I don’t have much extra brainspace. I knew this was coming and I knew that I was having a really hard time keeping the house livable. Four kids make messes far faster than one mom can clean them up. The obvious solution was to make the kids do more of the housework. Unfortunately making kids do work is ofen 2-3 times harder than doing it myself, so I often fail to push the issue. With all of this in mind, I crafted an incentive plan.
Children are visual and I knew I needed a way for them to track how they were doing. I also needed a great big reminder of what they’re supposed to be doing. So I comandeered a left over display board and created four trails across it. Each child has a character and a path to follow. Each path has about 50 spaces, but the paths for Patches and Gleek are slightly shorter than those for Kiki and Link. When all four children reach the finish line Howard and I have promised to buy them a new video game or maybe take a family trip to Chuck E Cheese. I figure it will take them about a month to work their way to the end of the path. That’s a very long time for kids to work toward a reward, so about every 10 spaces along each path is a star space. When a child lands on a star space they get a treat. Right now they’re mostly focused on the star spaces, but I don’t much care as long as the work gets done.
The way that the kids get to move their characters along their path is by completing required chores. They have 5 Morning Things and 5 Bedtime Things that they have to do each day. Whenever they complete a set of Things, they get to move one space forward. The 5 Morning Things are: Get dressed, Eat Breakfast, Brush teeth & hair, Make your bed, Do one chore from the list next to the chart. The 5 Bedtime things are: Put on Pajamas, Eat snack, Brush teeth, Pick up 30 toys, Say prayers. Sad to say, there are usually plenty of toys for all four kids to pick up 30 toys each, particularly if the duplos have been scattered yet again. In addition to all of that each child has been assigned a day to be the kitchen helper. When they complete kitchen helper duties they get an additional move.
So far this plan has worked exceptionally well. I fill the chore list with things like washing doors and walls. Suddenly those things are actually getting done. The house has been lots more picked up. The kids moan and groan, but they also feel accomplished to know that they’ve actually contributed to the smooth running of the household. Since I printed up lists of the 5 Morning Things, and 5 Bedtime Things, I don’t have to nag about each thing, I just tell the older two to check the list.
There have been a few kinks. Just last night when I required Link to think up a consequence for a misbehavior, he suggested moving back a couple of spaces on the chart. He seemed a little too cheerful about the prospect and on further inquiry I discovered that he wanted to move back two spaces so that he could land on the star space again and get another treat. I informed him that the star spaces only worked the first time they were landed on and all the appeal of that consequence evaporated.
So I’m liking the new system. At some point in the next 4 months it will probably fall apart and I’ll have to create something new. That is to be expected as our family needs shift and our family members grow. It just feels good to have solved the problem for now.