Okay I admit that I have tried things in the past. We were using Accountable Kids and it was working great, then Nathaniel was born and I realized that Max needed something a bit more. I was also having issues with keeping Max wanting to do school work. And when he was doing it, it was taking him FOREVER to complete even simple tasks.
So I started thinking about it and this is what I came up with. It is still a work in progress but it is WORKING. So that is the important thing.
We are using a ticket system where Max and Nathaniel earn tickets for things done around the house. This includes school work as well as general chores, or even Max reading to Nathaniel.
Max then earns tickets (outright for school, grab bag for everything else) that he can use for things like desert at night, english TV, something other then water to drink for meals, or the like. German TV we have made free for him so he can learn German. Or he can save up his tickets for prizes that I have put on a sheet. These are toys or things I know he wants. The price for said items is 1 ticket = $0.50, though I think after the first of the year we will make it 1 ticket = $0.25. I will have to see.
The grab bag has mostly 1 ticket tickets, but has a few 2, 3 and a couple 5 and 10 ticket offerings. So theoretically he could get 20 tickets with just 2 draws from the grab bag. This helps motivate Max to earn grab bag tickets.
System on a bulletin board
tickets
“grab bag” tickets
The newest component to this system that we have done is we got doors for our “17 foot wall of knowledge”. This allows us to lock up some toys thus controlling some of the chaos that we were having EVERYDAY in our home. So now Max needs to have 8 tickets to get said toy from the cabinet, and when he cleans up said toy and returns it, he gets 5 tickets back. Nathaniel is 4 and 3 tickets. We use “tot locks” to lock up the toys.
Doors on cabinets…
It isn’t perfect but it is working. We are noticing less TV watching is happening, and the children are not fighting as much. Not sure how that happened but it is a nice by-product!
All of my stuff is in an Excel file if you would like my templets please let me know. You can contact me at [email protected], subject line “Max Tasks”.