Family Reward System

2012 for me is about simplifying my life.  I've been feeling very stressed and overwhelmed with everyday life.  I work full time and when I'm not working I'm just trying to keep up with all that is on my plate.  I get up early in the morning, get myself ready for work, take the dog outside, feed the dog, get both kids up, get dressed, brush hair, brush teeth, feed breakfast, drop off kids, work all day, get out at five, pick up the kids, come home, cook dinner, eat dinner, clean up after dinner, help with homework, give kids baths, put to bed, exercise for an hour, go to bed and do it all over again.  Sun up to sun down is spent doing something.  The weekends I spend doing approximately 8-10 loads of laundry, cleaning bathrooms, cleaning kids rooms, cleaning playrooms, washing floors, doing all the things I don't have time to do during the week.  The days fly by, weeks fly by and I feel like all I ever do is bitch at everyone.  Get up, hurry up, get dressed, pick up your toys, stop hitting your brother, go clean your room, drink your milk, turn off the TV blah blah blah.  I'm fed up.  So 2012 is about streamlining.  Getting rid of clutter, getting organized, spending more quality time with my kids and husband.

Many times in the past I've tried to create some sort of rewards system for the kids.  Sticker charts and other little things that have never seemed to work or make an impact.  I have been feeling extra stressed lately and certain child behaviors are getting out of control so for my own sanity I did some may-jah research on chore / reward charts for kids.  I feel like it is still a work in progress and we will work out the kinks as we go but today was day one and it was awesome!  I went to a couple different websites, got some ideas and made it into my own.  This website is where I got the idea for chore jar/sticks: http://www.whateverdeedeewants.com/2011/07/terrific-tuesdays-chore-jar.html.  This was the other website that I got the idea for the token/reward system.  www.tipjunkie.com .

So the more and more research I did I started to see these amazing chore charts and magnet boards and it became overwhelming.  These women are crafty Martha Stewarts.  I was really anxious to get this going and didn't want to spend a lot of time buying stuff, making stuff before I could finally implement it.  The only thing I ended up purchasing was the extra large popsicle sticks, the rest I used what I had around the house.

First thing I did was select a color to assign to each room in the house.  Kitchen is green, living room is blue and so on. Then I started to think of chore ideas for each room some geared toward my older child and easier chores for my younger child.  I took extra large popsicle sticks, Avery filing label stickers, and colored markers.  Here are what some of my chore sticks look like:

Each child has a mason jar that I will load up daily with their chores that they need to do.  Once they complete a chore they can move their chore stick to the 'Complete' jar.  At the end of the day I will given them tokens for each completed chore. 

Next I created a jar for each child to collect their reward tokens in.  Daddy had a ton of old crappy poker chips that he doesn't use anymore so that is what we are using for "tokens."  Here are their reward jars:

I know it's only day one but the kids were jumping up and down and excited to complete their chores.  Having them help me do chores will certainly lighten my load which is a huge plus.  They now have incentive to get chores done and can feel pride when collecting their reward tokens at the end of the day. 

Besides chores, the other big issue around the house is behavior.  I wanted to be sure I am also rewarding for good behavior, eating dinner, drinking milk, saying please and thank you, no whining, no hitting.  I will also be taking away tokens, after a warning, as a consequence of bad behavior.  I still need to complete the final piece of this in which I will create a poster board called The Bosley Family store.  It will list a bunch of items and or activities in which they can get with their tokens.  For example 30 min. of playing Wii will cost them 3 tokens.  This will help to alleviate another one of my pet peeves where the kids turn on the TV or the Wii anytime they feel like it and start playing.  This way they will have to make a conscious effort if they want to spend their hard earned tokens on video games and it will allow me to put a better time limit on it. 

I have to say I feel quite good about myself creating and implementing this wonderful reward system for my family.  This is in place to benefit everyone.  It will help alleviate some of my stress, help to encourage my children to make good choices and praise with positive reinforcement.