We made chore charts over the weekend and put them into use today.
The gist: Each kid has a sheet that needs to have daily check marks for each task in order to earn their "warm fuzzy" (a pom pom) and allowance ($1) at the end of each week. The warm fuzzy will go into a jar that, once filled, can be cashed in for something extra fun (e.g. a new toy or family adventure). They don't understand much about money yet other than the basic concept: it can be used to buy things. They can spend their dollar on candy, or save it up to buy a little toy. Whatever they want. This will teach them about earning and saving and spending (right?) Ages 3 and 4 do not seem too young to us to get this started, since they already tell us to go buy something (usually a food item) if we're out of it, so they obviously understand what money is used for. Now they need to learn how much money is needed for certain items, and how hard it is to earn it!
Their chore charts are currently very basic (get dressed, brush your teeth, choose your breakfast, put away your shoes and backpack after school, feed/water the cats, clean up your toys, put your dirty clothes into the laundry basket, take a bath, put your pajamas on, and take your vitamin) with items pictured rather than written, and separated into morning and evening activities (with not much to do in the mornings, since we let them sleep until the last possible minute to get to school on time). The kids do help with other, actual chores (cleaning the table after meals, transferring laundry, etc.), and those things might migrate to their chore charts once they've gotten the hang of the charts and I can take some of the basics off (obviously we don't want to reward them for getting dressed and brushing their teeth forever - those are not chores, those are things everyone has to do in life). We'll leave the bigger things (ironing, mowing the lawn, etc.) off until the kids are old enough not only to complete them, but old enough to want bigger allowances. And at that point, we'll probably seriously consider keeping a grab bag of larger household tasks they can choose from in order to earn a few extra bucks. Only time will tell. This is a good start though. And the kids were very excited to use the dry erase marker to make their very own check marks under Monday this morning!
Oh, and above the chore charts are their REWARDS and CONSEQUENCES. These apply solely to their school reports. For example, if James gets a good report every day for the week, he can pick something special to go do (eat frozen yogurt at Orange Leaf, see a movie in the theater, or play at the bounce house place, for example). If, however, he gets sad faces instead of happy faces on his report (which happened 4 out of 5 days last week, after an ENTIRE SUMMER of only happy faces - for which he earned a new toy), then he has consequences (no playing games on our phones at restaurants, no renting a movie from RedBox for the weekend, no TV on Saturday morning while mommy is running, etc.) Cora doesn't get a daily report card like James does, but her teacher doesn't hesitate to text me if there's an issue (hence the reason she knows to keep a bar of soap for sassing...), so we'll know if she's had a good week or bad week. And for her, accidents will play into this too. We are still having accident problems with Cora, and we're learning now that they tend to occur at three times: 1) when she's sleeping (which doesn't count against her, obviously), 2) when she's focused on something and doesn't want to take a break to visit the potty (like seat work/coloring or recess), and 3) when she's angry with us about something (usually getting in trouble/time-out trigger this, she literally pees her pants in anger). We are doing our best to be patient and to simply remind her more often to go to the bathroom and just "try" to pee, and offer her gummy bear rewards for keeping her undies dry, but it's really getting old. She's been potty trained for almost a year and a half now, and these random accidents that started back in December (and tend to occur for 1-2 weeks at a time) are really frustrating. We've had her checked by the pediatrician multiple times to be sure there is no medical issue, and we know part of it is influence from school (even now that she's up in the 3-year-old class, there are kids who aren't fully potty trained, and she wants the attention they get), but we feel like she's needing more encouragement from us. Punishment won't work (she doesn't care about losing out on TV, RedBox, or phone time anyway, not that any form of consequences other than the soap has EVER worked for her - another reason we're pushing the soap), so we're going to play up the rewards and see if that helps. Cross your fingers for us!
