Here's what we do.
I have a set of colorful nameplates I bought at the Teacher & Parents store (TAPS). I also bought the perennial favorite of teachers, a packet of gold stars. Above the name line I write the numbers 1-10 spaced out to fit a star. A full 'board' earns my son a trip to the store to spend $40 for anything he wants.
He has 'cashed in' one board so far and is only one star short of a second board. We have been doing this for about 3 months and the funny thing is he listens better and does what we want him to do - sometimes without even telling him!
How he has 'earned' stars:
* Help mommy with the baby - not for a minute but for a period of time past his short attention span.
* A big clean up. Not the daily 'nice-neat-and organized' routine but the one where we decide which toys go back upstairs and which stay downstairs.
* Waking up and getting ready for school or bed without being told. That means changing his clothes and brushing his teeth and cleaning up in the evening.
* Having a good attitude consistently for 3 days or more (no complaints).
* Helping mommy with the garden - if you've seen the pictures you'll understand why!
He has also earned one time stars. In other words he received the star for the first time he did something we wanted him to, but not after that - it was expected.
I remember now why I came up with this. I went to his preschool parent teacher conference . His report was great - nothing he needed to improve. So I asked for ideas about what we could improve in how we handle him so he would listen better to us. His teacher gave me examples of how she handles the children and I noticed, every example highlighted positive behaviors. Until then we had gotten into the habit of being short with him. That approach let's off steam but doesn't fix the underlying problem. I went home and started feeding the baby reading one of my parent or womens magazines, when something in an article mentioned giving a sticker as a reward. I knew then what I would do. The next day we went to TAPS. I spent a good twenty minutes looking for a letter sized board to display his stickers -- then I found the pack of 100 nameplates (3" x 11") and gold stars next to them. Voila! This would be our reward system.
I should have figured this out before! About a year ago I finally discovered the secret to getting him potty trained. In that case it was a bribe. We had been telling him he would get a game when he went started to use the potty. We didn't realize that he didn't understand that concept - it was too abstract. So one weekend I went ahead and bought a gameboy game and put it up on the laundry room shelf. Then sometime that week, he was sitting on the potty, refusing to go. In my frustration I grabbed the game and said "See this is what you'll get if you just go in the potty and stop wearing diapers!!" BINGO! His eyes lit up and his whole attitude changed. The next day he was potty trained!
Our son is very bright. As we have learned punishments don't work with him; instead rewards and empathy do. We use empathy - put him in the other person's shoes - when he has hurt someone or could have. He has to understand why his behavior is incorrect. Once he understands, he chooses not to engage in that behavior.
Our friends and coworkers remark how lucky our son is to grow up with 'two smart parents'. But I know there are far smarter parents than us in other areas. The problem for us is that we don't understand what our children don't comprehend. My handicap when I help people with computer issues is that things that are intuitive to me are not even in the realm of reality for the casual computer user. I am learning the same thing is true about children. We forget that at one time we simply didn't know there was 'such a thing as
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