These Things Are Genetic!
Does it count if you have to ask?
I'm not sure.
Every day I would ask Alexis to clean up her toys and empty the dishwasher and finish a bunch of other chores. Every day she would do those things, but not until after she had piled on a mountain of whining, and certainly not until I asked her to do it forty eleventy bajillion times. Which, really, why do I have to ask? WHY?
A little over a month ago, I decided I was done asking.
Enter the Chore Chart.
I don't know why I didn't start it sooner, but I finally realized it was time to throw together a Chore Chart and stick it on the fridge. The general idea was that Alexis can earn stickers by doing chores. But! But! BUT! Bonus stickers are available! For example, she gets one sticker for doing her homework. The thing is she doesn't have any sort of choice in that issue, though, so that's a giveaway. What she can choose to do is to do her homework without me asking and she can do it without whining. If she manages to do both of those things? Homework is suddenly worth five stickers. Five! That's a lot of stickers!
She can earn stickers for putting away her clean laundry, emptying the dishwasher, cleaning her playroom, doing her homework, picking up her toys in the family room, and all sorts of other things. The tasks themselves aren't the focus, though. It's all about the self-motivation and halfway reasonable attitude.
You guys, I'm kind of a genius sometimes. The whole thing is totally working. So far.
(Excuse me while I go knock on some wood.)
For the past month or so, Alexis has been dutifully collecting her stickers every day. She doesn't do all of the possible chores, but she does some of them each day. It's really a beautiful thing. At the end of the week, she gets to count all of her stickers and I trade her. She gets 20 cents for each sticker, which generally puts her right around $5 earned each week.
Don't tell her this little tidbit, but really we're just giving her money that we would spend on her anyway. Instead of buying her an occasional toy or book or whatever, we let her decide how to spend that $20 or so of disposable income each month. We have almost completely stopped buying her random things, instead forcing her to use her own money. Which she earned. But that we were going to spend on her anyway.
It's really fun being the grown-up sometimes.
Alexis decided to save her money all through October. It's sort of a rare thing for her as she usually acts like her money is on fire and she better spend it NOOOOW! or it will turn to ash. She saved it, however, because she had a plan.
She planned to stand in the Barbie aisle at Walmart for a very long time.
She stood there, just sort of staring at everything, FOREVER. She stood there and she stood there and my hair turned gray and my wrinkles grew deeper and I think Justin Bieber celebrated his 80th birthday. I tried to be patient since we drag her to stores she doesn't like all the time, but I wasn't really expecting to turn into a senior citizen while watching my offspring stare at Barbie dolls.
But then she made her decision.
She skipped right over Barbie and went for a Monster High Doll instead. I know she picked it because she's still in the middle of loving all things Halloween, especially vampires, but still. You guys! She used her own money to buy a creepy doll!
Do you think I can talk her into using her money to buy me the last doll over here? Because I still want him.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Reader Comments (10)
Some of those dolls I think are pretty creative and awesome, but some of them are super whore-ish. I'm sort of torn about them.
great parenting technique. seriously. way to teach responsibility at the house and with money at the same time. go you!
p.s. i know i have said it before and i will say it again, alexis rocks. such a great and fun kid. even if she doesn't like me.
:)
First of all, stop with those super creepy babies - ewwwww! They scare me! ;)
Second, way to go! My son and daughter also have a chore chart. Only it is entitled "Ways I help the Family". My son has saved his money for months and finally bought himself his very own DSi. He is so proud. My daughter on the other hand cannot hold onto her money. She needs to spend it like it is burning her but that is only if she will motivate herself enough to actually do the chores to earn the money. So fun to see the differences.
Ha ha ha! I love when you throw a creepy doll mention in a post!
Yup. Isn't that always the kicker? You let them earn their own money...but then you have to accept that they are not going to buy things that you would ever dream of buying yourself.
I think the chore chart is a great idea as well. I think that I might start one for my daughter - but we'll see if she gives a crap.
I need to do one of those charts if only to avoid homework drama. also making her spend "her" money is brilliant. We had a similar Walmart experience on Sunday. She had $20 to spend from returning a duplicate barbie and another $10. I don't know how long we spent in that Barbie aisle, but I know she changed her mind 50 times.
@Sarah--An unexpected and glorious side effect of giving her money to spend has been that she no longer asks for stuff when we're shopping. Apparently she got tired of hearing me say, "Is that what you want to use your money to buy?" and "Do you have your money with you?" :-D
This is a really brilliant plan. I've tried the chore chart with my oldest before and it just didn't work for him but this way might work better. Cash Money, BABY! ;)
That's a pretty cool doll...
Okay....now those dolls have just plain skeeved me out and it's only 9:30am on a gorgeous Saturday morning. *shudder*
On to better things - the chore chart worked for my son for years but we just gave him stars for the stuff he completed. I love the 'turn in the stickers for money' part. I wonder it that will still work (considering he just turned 15 I'm thinking those stickers will be costing me a bit more than 0.20 each)?