Let's Hope This Works: Reward Chart

[cindygirl]

When our difficult child was this age the counsellor suggested taking pictures of what our expectations were. What constituted a clean room. Take the picture of the bed with the toys on it and put it next to the chart. Make sure grandpa is going to be available to take difficult child when he has earned the points, don't promise something you can't fulfill. Also there should be daily and weekly rewards. If he does everything to your expectation an extra ten minutes with friends after school. These kids attention span is minute and they need pretty instant gratification. Over time you can try and work for longer time periods. But remember these cousellors do not come home with you so they don't really know what is working. The rewards that you start with may not work, and if he is still fairly compliant when he first gets home then have him do the bed, ect when he first walks in just like homework. The only ones that must be done before school are getting dressed, brushing teeth, eating breakfast. If you have time before school or on weekends try a muffin making morning, or making pancakes. 2 benefits. Healthy food, and it is giving him the building blocks for cooking later. difficult child is now 16 and easy child is 12. They can both cook basic foods and know about healthy eating and nutrition. The foods teacher at junior high is starting with the basic orange juice, sparkling water combo because many of these kids know absolutely nothing. Yes our difficult child's have very low attention spans but most are extremely creative (many times to our horror) so anything to channel them into a creative venue where they can have fun is a fantastic motivator. Just remind him that he is not to try to make the item without an adult present. There may also be other things that you can channel him toward that may not make it onto a chart but can be used to generate compliance. Our children are not rigid so neither should the rewards. I want was a familliar theme when difficult child was small, so we helped her earn these rewards. But this may work a little, a lot or not at all. Don't get discouraged, just keep working at it.

 

[Allan-Matlem]

Hi,

I am not a fan of reward charts - they don't deal with the underlying problems or missing skills and in the long term extrinsic motivation undermines intrinsic motivation and kids loose interest . I prefer the explosive child http://thinkkids.org

If one is using a chart , I would follow these guidelines

1 make it very , very easy to earn points - what is important is the momentum
2 don't take off points
3 let the kid participate in setting up the system , make the extrinsic motivation self determined , not that you are trying to control him
4 focus on values behind the behaviors , procedures etc - the extrinsic motivation is to help the child with the goal of getting things done , living in harmony etc . When the focus is the reward , we just motivate kids to get more rewards.
5 Instead of rewards try give chores etc an association with fun , try to make what we ask engaging for the child.

Allan