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[quote=Anonymous]Hi OP. I’m a longtime former teacher and now a principal. I help teachers across a wide range of age develop incentive/behavior plans. They can be very powerful, and they can fail quickly.

First, what exactly are you trying to accomplish? Is there a specific behavior you’re trying to eliminate, ie whining, leaving toys out.

Or are you trying to get them to follow a routine at bedtime or wake-up?

You posted that you were trying to incentivize “good behavior.” That’s way too fuzzy and will end in failure. What exactly is “good behavior?” The more clarity you have about the behavior and the less subjectivity needed to determine if happened, the better.

-Focus on the 1-3 behaviors you want to see or eliminate. I like to set up the chart in yes/no prompts. Either you did it or you didn’t. Example:
[i]My toys were put away by 8pm with only one reminder. yes or no 
I used kind, caring words when talking to my brother today. Yes or no. [/i]
-Get buy-in from kids by offering choice on what the reward is. 
-Make sure the reward is not too far away. If I’m 6 and have to wait a week for my reward, it might not work for me. Perhaps a small sticker is earned for each “yes” action daily, and an accumulated 10 stickers earns a prize. This allows for mistakes to happen and doesn’t blow it for the week. 
-As someone else noted, what happens if one kid meets the expectation and the other doesn’t? 
-And finally, I really appreciate what another poster noted about family movie not being a reward but just something you all should be doing together. You should be having a regularly scheduled family fun dinner or movie night or game night.

Good luck. [/quote]

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