I have tried several reward systems over the years and I’m sure I will still have several more in my future. It changes based on stage/age/ability of the kids.
But I’ve enjoyed this recent stage because Jordyn and Lexi are much more capable of carrying out responsibilities with much less hand-holding than when they were little and it felt like WAY more work for me to get them to do any chores. They are really good at rotating unloading the dishwasher. As well as Saturday chores. They’ve both learned to clean the entire bathroom. They are good at taking out all the trashes with Peyton’s help. While often not without complaint, once they get in the groove they are showing they are quite capable…which has been nice.
So recently the system we are trying to implement is the Family Economy based on the model by Linda and Richard Eyre. You can see it HERE. Here is a brief description:
It is a day I remember well, because it was the first day that I realized that “allowances” were working against us and that money was helping me spoil my kids much more than it was helping me teach them anything. It was a Saturday morning, and I was trying to catch up a little on sleep. I was awakened by loud knocking on the locked bedroom door. Groggily, I got up and opened it to find three little kids with their hands out saying “Gimme my money, gimme my money, its allowance day.” To my sleepy eyes, it all looked a bit like a welfare line. I had just opened the window, and here were the people with their hands out, collecting the dole!
We had created an economy in our house all right, but it was an entitlement economy! My kids, I realized in that brief epiphany, saw no connection between performance and reward, they perceived no real ownership in the money we gave them or the things they bought with it, and they were learning the antithesis of initiative and responsibility rather than the essence of it.
Over the next several months, we worked with some other parents who had some of the same concerns, and developed what we started to call “the free enterprise family economy” with the goal of creating something of a microcosm of a real workplace and market in each of our homes and better preparing our kids to handle the real economic world some day, and to be more responsible and motivated in our own world in the meantime.
So I made the chart above. This is separate from their chores. (And Peyton’s magnets are more for “fun” because the economy isn’t really meant for under 7 or 8 years old). So each day, the girls can earn four points for getting ready for school on time, doing homework on time, getting to bed (and all that entails) on time and taking care of the zone of the house they’ve been assigned. They fill out a slip and have to get it initialed by a parent and put it in the “bank” each night. On the weekend, we add up the points and they get paid $ .50 per point, so they can earn up to $10 per week. We don’t give it to them in cash, we have them write it in their check register (I printed for them) so it is kept in their “bank account”. When they want to buy something, they have to write a check out for it (printed by me). So, for example, they are supposed to be able to help buy their own school clothes, and any other things they want. They also have opportunities to do other paid jobs (these are xtra jobs, beyond regular chores like vacuum the cars).
Anyway, there are more details than that but that is the gist. We’ve been doing it for about two months now and they seem to be getting the hang of it. I like it because I don’t have to have cash on me to pay them, and they are learning how to conceptualize money beyond touching/feeling it since that is more how it is in the “real” world. I’ll have to update periodically on how this continues to work for us…since we all knows that nothing works forever! So far, I’ve enjoyed the values behind this system. Check out the site or the book “Three Steps to a Strong Family” (you can see it HERE).
