Motivation

I am constantly amazed at what motivates children.  If you go potty I will give you a sticker! Really? What does a sticker even do...it doesn't move (ok unless it has googly eyes), it doesn't provide entertainment, it doesn't talk, maybe it smells (if you are really lucky) and maybe it is shiny or hologram-ey (you know what I mean), but really why are stickers fun? Food, now that is a motivator. Wash your hands and you can have a chocolate chip.  Do you know the things my kids would do for ONE smartie?! But we aren't supposed to reward our children with food, that's not good parenting and will surely lead to our children comfort eating and morbid obesity.  So let's just make a chart, maybe we will use fun stickers, maybe just good old fashioned metallic stars, or maybe just a hand drawn start, or even worse just a check mark.

Here lies my faults...I can't ever stick to one plan.  My husband will fully support whatever plan we are on, but it is hard to keep up.  At one point it was chore sticks.  Misbehave, draw a stick and do the punishment on the stick.  That lasted for a while and is still a personal favorite, but then this thing in the back of my head said "that is negative parenting...be a positive parent".  Now we are onto Kindness Coins (aka poker chips).  The idea being that are easy to earn and you get them for being kind and doing what you are suppose to do (you know like brush your teeth without being asked more than once!).  And once the kids earned them they couldn't be taken away - unless the word stupid was used of our son made a gun with his fingers (referred to as the finger gun).  Those are nonnegotiables for me.  The coins can then be redeemed for TV time, iPad time, a bubble bath, a movie night, etc...  Again that was going ok, but I was riding myself nagging our daughter to do her daily chores.  No one likes a nag, I get that it, but what is a mom to do?!  The kids get so frustrated when I yell.  This is my response "if you did what I asked you to do that first time I wouldn't have to yell" or I start taking in a real sweet voice and say "if you did it the first time I asked this nicely" (then start really making a scene and yelling) "I wouldn't have to YELL!!!!"  I can ask them to do something five times and then finally yell and they say "why are you yelling at me?"  Why do kids do this? I know I am not in this boat alone.  Do all the little sperm get together and plot against us really far in advance and make vicious plans like this to drive us crazy?!

My idea to try to nag less...I created a checklist.  My daughter's has words, my son's has pictures and it is divided into two parts, things to do before school and things to do before bed.  This way they know what is expected of them everyday without me having to repeat myself constantly and they can bring me the checklist and get coins for each checkmark.

Here is the real truth, all of this Pinterst-ey ideas are great ideas, but they take time and energy and some days my tank is just low.  The days that I come up with these schemes to get perfectly behaved children I obviously have a full tank.  Two weeks into these shenanigans I need a refill, or what really happens is that we run out of stickers, or I forget to print off more checklists, or I just turn the TV on because I need a break and don't ask for coins, etc....and the wheels fall off and the next time we have a behavior issue I scheme a new plan/chart/system and the vicious cycle starts all over again!

Then I think back to how we were raised.  By we, I mean myself, my husband, my brother, my sister-in-law.  I don't ever remember charts, or coins or stickers.  We just did what we were supposed to do because I think we were afraid not to.  I never wanted to disappoint my parents.  I still don't want to disappoint my parents.  If we could just get our kids to understand that and know that they would end up to be self sufficient good citizens in our society maybe I wouldn't be so tired.  I never knew parenting was so exhausting. Or do I just make it that way? And at the end of the day we have good kids, they don't have major behavioral issues (ok please don't judge that my son contemplated stealing the smelly bunny from Wal-Mart - cross reference 2littlechiefs.blogspot.com entry "Things that happen at Wal-Mart").

Ok, now I have to go make dinner and prepare for my dog's practice graduation...that's' another story, for another day. Rice