Sunday 7 November 2010

Reward Chart

Today we start the reward chart, we join all the other parents taking advice from the likes of the super-nannies. Jack is generally a very well behaved child, this is just intended to break a few behavioral habits. These are the little things with which we have trouble every... single... day. You can almost set your watch by them. This has been a long time coming.

There are four main habits that we're out to defeat.

Dinner time.

Since Jack's teeth came in we've had trouble at dinner time. I don't know what it is about that meal but he always puts up a fight when it comes to eating it. He'll gab, and fiddle and play about until finally resorting to just flat out refusal to eat at all. It's rare that dinner takes any less than an hour from the time we sit down and with bed time looming it can be quite stressful for us, Jack can't seem to get to sleep with a full tummy. We've tried all sorts of things to encourage him to just eat his dinner but it's never got any better. This is one of the main elements of the reward chart.

Dog walking.

Jack doesn't like walking the dogs and often will whinge and complain every step of the way. It makes the whole thing stressful for us and the dogs and normally we've not got a lot of time.

Whinging and generally talking back.

This is my big thing. Complaining is one thing, everyone's got their opinion and should be free to express displeasure but I cannot abide whinging. My self-control goes right out the window at the first whine.

Jack's also recently developed the charming little habit of talking back. We're trying to head this one off at the pass.

Listening.

You'd swear he was deaf if you never said certain keywords like sweets or toys. Yes he's only 3 but it goes a little beyond that, I can handle having to tell jack something twice, three, or even four times, but it doesn't seem to really matter with Jack most the time. You can tell him something a hundred times and he'll still ignore you. Sure he's 3 and easily distracted but a lot of the time he's just plain not interested in what you're trying to tell him and if you do finally manage to get his attention he responds with a very teenage sounding, Alright fine Ugh!


The chart is primarily designed to promote good behavior though, at least that's what we've gone for. There's a lot more opportunity for him to move up the chart than down and the rewards are scaled and are very instant, starting with balloons and sweets and going up to toys. He gets rewarded for things like tidying his toys, whinge free events, eating his dinner. In the opposite spectrum, mis-behavior mostly leads to confiscation of toys and teddies.

So far he's going alright, he's earned 3 Spongebob (good) points and 1 Squidward (bad) point, which he earned this morning before we'd even put the chart up.

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