Wednesday, July 25, 2007

My new best friend!

Yes, my new best friend is a container full of nickels! We are trying out a new incentive program for our children and it's working out beautifully!! Each morning we give them 10 nickels to keep in their pocket. If they disobey, give me attitude, strike a bad tone, or anything else we deem unacceptable, I hold out my hand and they silently put one nickel into it. If they complain about it I keep my hand out for another one. Whatever nickels they have left at the end of the day are theirs to keep. Our 7 year old son in particular is responding so well to this! Yesterday I told him to unload the dishwasher, and he began to say, "but that takes so lo...." and then slapped his hand over his mouth and immediately began working. Yay!! We may have to switch to dimes at some point, but for now nickels work great! (this idea was not an original one - credit goes to Katherine Bell for this wonderful motivational tool!)

2 comments:

votemom said...

thanks for the blog invite! it's nap time and i'm catching up on all the blogs i frequent. i'm so happy to add yours!

the nickel idea is a good one. we did that with quarters on road trips when our kids were younger. we'd start out with a roll of quarters for each one ($10). whatever they had left when they arrived at our destination was theirs to spend however they wished.

we would also give bonus quarters at random times for acts of kindess and respect shown to siblings.

see you tonight!

Susanne Barrett said...

I remember Katherine telling me about this one years and years ago. I just never had the energy to keep it going.... :)