Today is the first official day of summer vacation... sort of. It's the first day that my kids are home instead of at school, so in my eyes, this is the first real day. So today was the day to start teaching my children about rewards and consequences - part of the topic in chapter 4 of the Boundaries with Kids book by Cloud and Townsend. The chapter is entitled "What Will Happen If I Do This?".
I love this chapter because it pulls up several illustrations of how parents can sabotage their own rules. You know... we all do it. We say "Billy, you won't be able to go to the pool with us if you don't get your chores done"... and then Billy doesn't get the chores done, but somehow we end up letting him come anyways because it would have been completely inconvenient to us for him not to have come or we just would have felt too sad for Billy if he had missed out. And sometimes we even go so far as to do his chores for him - or get the other kids to help him!! Of course, we make him feel totally guilty for not doing the chores or remind him over and over of how "full of grace" we are being for allowing him to come anyways and in so doing, feel like we are somehow punishing him. I've seen people do this - and have probably even done it myself in the past week or so.
Well, this summer is going to be different! The 2 older kids are going to get an allowance (the 3 year old is not privy to this!). Whether they get all of that allowance will depend on whether they keep up with some age-appropriate requirements. Now, I sat them down this morning and we came up with a list together. This list includes: making their beds, putting away their own laundry, and cleaning up after themselves. It's a little more detailed, but I don't want to bore you with all of that. At the end of the week, they will get "paid". From that money, they will have to put 10% in savings and 10% will be given to God (now, if you are not a Christ-follower, you could decide to put that money towards the charity of your choice. In any case, I believe the principle of giving back is an important one).
Also - just to make things more complicated (HA!), we have a list of "negatives". Those include things like whining, fighting, disobedience, and lying (again, they helped come up with the list). Every time they do one of those things, they will get a "strike" against them. Three strikes during the week means they will not be allowed to participate in a fun Friday activity. They will reap the consequences of their behavior and hopefully learn to avoid being excluded from the fun by choosing to act in appropriate ways.
So - if this all seems a bit jumbled, it's because I'm hurriedly trying to jot this down before I take the little monkeys out for the afternoon to swim at a friend's pool. I'd love to hear what any of you think about this - or even if you've tried to do something similar with your kids!
Have a great week everyone!
