HOW TO REWARD YOUR KIDS

Remember when rewards and incentives for your kids used to be so easy? For a 3 or 4 year old, a star next to their name was the greatest thing ever! Then you progressed on to maybe stickers. Still pretty cool! Perhaps a trip to the dollar store was next. But whatever the path, I think all parents end up at the same reward: COLD HARD CASH!!!

My boys are 8 years old now, and no matter how many toys they have, it’s never enough. (Boys never really grow out of this, do they? I mean, even as men!) So we have a few things going on right now to give them the opportunity to earn money.

The first thing we did was connect money with chores. They’ve had chores for quite a while now, but of course I always have to remind them what do to and when. So now, if they actually do a chore ON THEIR OWN without being reminded by either me or DH, they earn a quarter. Not a lot, I know, but they have the opportunity to earn a couple of bucks a day. This, of course, has never been accomplished, but I’m still holding out hope!

The boys started having a bit of trouble this school year with getting homework done in a timely manner, so I addressed that next. (You know, they would sit down to do it, but somehow end up wrestling on the floor.) So now, if they immediately start on their homework after they have a snack, and complete it in a reasonable amount of time (as determined by ME) with the least amount of distractions (also determined by ME) and with the proper amount of concentration and attentiveness (yep, you guessed it, according to ME), they get a quarter. You wouldn’t think that a mere 25 cents would incent them to stop playing and actually work on homework, but it really does!

So now, I have one more idea, which I worked out with one of the 3rd grade teachers. For every paper that they bring home with their best effort made, they will get a quarter. I told them that the grade isn’t as important as whether or not they followed the instructions, answered the questions to the best of their knowledge, and went over their work before turning it in. I’m seeing too many answers marked wrong because they didn’t read instructions or accidently skipped over a question. With one of the boys, it will be easy to tell, because he’s usually not careless, but with the other one, his teacher is going to put a little star at the bottom of the paper if she feels he really did his best. So we’ll see how this one works out.

So what are your ideas for rewarding your kids for good behavior? I’m always open to new ones!

Karen