Rewards

For some reason, our family is just not that good with the whole allowance thing. Our family wasn't when I was a kid, and that tradition has somehow continued with my family. Somehow we can never remember to hand out the money, count the stickers, whatever it is, or we just don't have $2.80 hanging around. I might have a twenty and some pennies, but exact change, not so much. We tried it for a while. (The kids each even have three piggy banks -- one for spending, one for saving and one for charity. It all started out with great intentions, but never really caught on.)

Our solution came as a suggestion during one of our parent ed classes. Someone was talking about marbles in a jar. Duh! I used to do that with my table groups when I was teaching. Each table group would get marbles for awards for various things. When all the marbles were gone, we would count up the marbles and the group with the most marbles would get a reward. The reward was always to eat lunch in the classroom with me and play games afterwards. (Sounds silly, but for second graders, this is a real treat!) And it is so easy! Someone else reminded us all that marbles and babies are not such good friends, and so poker chips have become the new marbles.

We started this with our family a couple months ago. Before we fill our jar, we vote as a family as to what we want our reward to be. (We devised a long list together before getting started. The list contains all sorts of things from going bowling to a trip to Hawaii -- thank God Mommy and Daddy get a vote and are smart enough to vote together!) Then the kids get poker chips for any job that they do, sometimes for especially great behavior or for something we are working on. For example, Zachary gets a poker chip every day he doesn't wet his pants. He gets an extra one for making it through a play date (so exciting! no time to pee!) without wetting his pants. The poker chips go into one jar, so working together counts extra. Annalise will get a poker chip for watering the plants, but if Zachary helps, then they both get to put one in. I really like the system because it encourages them to cooperate and work together. They also are quick to point out when the other deserves some praise, and applaud each others' accomplishments. It has been expecially helpful to me when Jason is out of town. The evenings can be tricky with trying to get all three of them down, reading books, taking out the trash, etc. They help me out a TON and I am more than happy to reward them. The rewards are simple, and honestly are things we would do anyway (that is until the kids get Juliette voting and really campaign for that trip to Hawaii). But I think these adventures have so much more meaning since they earned them. After each trip, we have thanked the kids for earning the trip that we got to enjoy as well. So far we have gone to La Brea Tarpits, out to ice cream and Sunday we took the Metro to Olvera Street. Really simple pleasures, but each night before bed, Zachary wants us to tell him about La Brea Tarpits. That's a great reward for us, too.