Forum Index
»
Infants, Toddlers, & Preschoolers
Stumbled onto a great way to motivate my 3 kids to help around the house
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
|
I had to share this idea because I'm just blown away by how my kids have fallen for it, hook, line and sinker!
My kids are 13, 7, and 3 by the way, so each has a vastly different ability in their chore division. None of them willingly do chores, ever. It's like pulling teeth to get them to help, lots of nagging, supervision, "quality checking" the work (which usually means 2-3x before it's done right), etc. Well, one day, I was getting ready to start chores and I thought I'd offer a fun destination of their choice after we finished our chores. But before I opened my mouth, I immediately saw the next logical response, fighting over who gets to choose (again, the ages... worlds of difference on where we'd go). Then it hit me. A lottery! I got a little glass fishbowl out and tore up slips of paper. I told the kids we were going to have a drawing to see who gets to choose our fun destination that night. The way to get your name in the bowl was to do a chore and tell me about it. 1 chore= 1 ticket in the drawing. There was no limit to how many chores/ times you could enter. I never expected the response to be so overwhelmingly positive. My kids were literally jockeying for position as to who finished a chore first and "got to" ask me for another chore to do. I had them inventing chores to get a ticket - - ie, my daughter asked if she could go pull weeds in the flower bed! They not only did their base chores without any prodding on my part, but they fought amongst themselves to pick up additional chores. All just to get an extra ticket or three in the fishbowl! I was hearing things you'd never imagine hearing come out of your kids' mouths. Example, "No fair! I was going to sweep the floor!" "I call vacuuming the stairs!!" and "Mom, she started helping me sweep the floor, and I'm doing it all by myself"! 
I've been using this tactic for about 3 weeks now, and it is STILL working. I can't afford to take them out every night, but we generally just do this on Saturdays so far. I'm thinking of trying to either stretch out the entry period to a week between drawings, or having a mini-drawing for an inexpensive or free destination on weeknights. My middle child chose Chuck E Cheese once and Build A Bear once, and my oldest chose a movie. I also thought about rigging the drawing so the youngest gets drawn, but I'm not sure I want to do that or not... he's holding his own against the bigger kids in tickets/ chores, so I think it will balance out over time. I still can't help but chuckle when we start up on Saturday - - I would have never dreamed I'd hear them fighting over who "gets to do" chores! Hope this might help someone else who dreads being the taskmaster to her kids on the weekends! |
zumbamama
Site Admin Offline
Site Admin Offline
| wow! I will give it a try! |
Anonymous
| Brilliant! |
Anonymous
| Another variation you might want to try if this gets too expensive or starts to wear off is to earn tickets to use in a sale. You can get various items that they might like and have them save up their tickets for a certain period of time. On the day of the "sale" they can either spend their tickets or save them. I got lots of mileage out of my kids doing this. The length of time you can make them "save" depends on age and personality. But, my kids are pretty easy and will be happy with pretty cheap trinkets - which incidently, drive me crazy because I hate junk. But, it's often worth it to get cooperation with a smile. |
Anonymous
| You should write a parenting book!! That is freakin' brilliant!! |
Anonymous
| Holy crap = 7:56 on a Saturday morning and this is the post i read. Huzzah - Oh Brilliant One. (now I have to try to explain it to DH - this is where the difficulty lay as he has not yet found our dishwasher) |
Anonymous
|
I love this!!! Any ideas on how to make this work with only one child who can do chores? (We have a six-year-old and two-year-old, and I don't think it will work with the two-year-old until she's older.)
|
Anonymous
| Great idea, thanks. I also am wondering if I can get this to work with just one child. |
Anonymous
|
OP here. I don't know how to make this competitive twist on chores work with just one child. The crux of it lies in doing more work (getting more tickets) than your siblings so YOU get to pick the destination... What they haven't figure out yet (God help me...) is if they get into collusion with their locale, I'm dead in the water. No need to compete. We ALL want to go bowling, Mom.
I did have a trick that worked when my oldest was 5 and an only child. He was getting to be such a handful and hard to motivate, bad behavior, bad attitude, etc - - typical 5 yr old stuff. It got to where I was embarrassed to take him to restaurants! I hit on an idea to harness his love of Toys R Us to his behavior. I did the same thing with a fishbowl (we called it his Marble Jar) and a big bag of marbles. The concept was simple: when the marble jar was full, he got to go to Toys R Us and pick out any toy he wanted (he didn't know the difference between a $5 toy then and a $100 toy, so it was easy!!) He earned marbles as follows: when I gave him a compliment for a job well done, or good behavior at the restaurant/ mall/ dentist office/ etc, he got one marble. I gave him lots of chances to get compliments all day long, of course. When a friend or family member (aunts, grandmother, neighbors, etc) gave him a compliment for doing something good, or helping, he got 5 marbles. Here's the brilliant kicker: when a total stranger stopped to give him a compliment, he got 25 marbles. Now, the stranger part was kind of what I was aiming for all along. Remember, I said he was an embarrassment to take out in public? As in, standing in the booth at a restaurant, barking in the grocery store, you know... Well, this little guy started making deliberate eye contact with people as he held a door open for them, hoping for the "what a nice young man!" compliment! He'd make deliberate eye contact with the waitress at a restaurant, asking for a Dr. Pepper, if it's not too much trouble, ma'am. Oh yes, he learned to get LOADS of compliments from total strangers, and I was only too happy to foster it! His dental hygienist about fell over with his manners and polite behavior at age 5. He filled that jar many times over and it was worth every penny to me! I think you could make that work for your only child at home with a little tweaking of how to earn marbles. |
Anonymous
| Wow - OP, I love both the ideas you have posted. If you have any other gems, please keep them going! |
Anonymous
| For the mom with the 2-year old - I think you could get this to work with a child that age - obviously the chores will need to be tailored, but I think they get helping and they definitely get choosing what to do - might not understand the competition part fully, but I think a rough version of what was going on would get through. |
Anonymous
|
I'm not worthy [bow bow bow]
YOu rule! |
Anonymous
|
Love the idea OP. Thanks for sharing.
Plus, it sounds like you're rewarded with great/quality family time too with all your destinations. |
Anonymous
| What great ideas! Especially the marble jar -- I've got a 5 yo in the defiant/testing limits/what-ever-you-want-to-call-it stage and that sounds perfect. We'll try it. |