Recently my wife emailed me an article that said preschoolers respond well to charts and stickers as a means of positive reinforcement, so we’ve been giving it a try for the past 2 weeks and it seems to be paying off.
We have set up a simple system where The Girl gets a sticker when she does certain tasks. Full cooperation with her nightly routine (getting in and out of the bath, putting her pj’s on and brushing her teeth) earns her a sticker. Sleeping through the night in her own bed gets a sticker. If she does come down to our bed, crawling in quietly without waking anyone up also gets her a sticker. Fully cooperating with her morning routine (eating breakfast, picking clothes, getting dressed, etc.) also earns a sticker. Once she gets 10 stickers she gets a reward.
So far, we’ve done 2 rewards (a new bed for one of her dolls and a trip to Dairy Queen for an ice cream cone). What we are planning to do for the rewards is write a bunch of them down on pieces of paper and stick them in a jar. Rewards run the gammut from the small like a package of gum or buying a piece of candy out of the vending machine after her swimming lessons, to medium rewards like getting a new book from the bookstore, to large like getting a new toy. To save our pocketbook (and to lower the risk of her expecting a big toy everytime she gets 10 stickers), we have way more small rewards than big. In fact, the buy a new toy is really the only big one. When she gets 10 stickers she can pick one from the jar.
It’s really amazing how much more cooperation we get with a bit of sugar than having to constantly bang our head against the wall and engage in a battle of wills to get the simple routine things done.
Bribery? Maybe so. But for the past 2 weeks we have had peace and cooperation in our house. And we have been laughing a heck of a lot more with each other than we had been in the previous month. And that, for all of us, is the real reward.
by Jim Lindberg of Pennywise. Really, when you are a punk and have lived the full punk life, what could be more punk to your circle of conformity rejecting anarchist friends than, uh, settling down and having kids.
, a book that has been nicely reviewed by 
. This is a very interesting book that, as a young lad, would have kept me occupied for hours with it’s how to instructions on creating invisible ink, knot tying, and building a tree house. 
is a classic game where you try to tap out blocks of ice one by one without shattering the whole ice surface, which causes the skating bear to fall thru the ice. Easy to play for a 3 year old and a great hand eye coordination exercise trying to tap out the bricks with just the right force.
. The trick is to drop beans onto the pot’s lid, one by one, without spilling them. The more beans there are, the harder it is. When the pot gets unbalanced, over spill the beans and everyone laughs and has a good time. This one does have a lot of small parts that could be a bit of a problem if you have a really young child around.
, but we weren’t prepared to take out a second mortgage, so we settled for a much more modest 
that was on sale for 1/2 price at our local auto centre (go figure they would sell strollers).
when it comes to the idea that vehicles can run on energy other than petroleum. But a hybrid minivan seems like such a no-brainer to me that the financial lure would be too strong even for the auto industry.
and you’ve got yourself a laughing toddler.
, all about the Mexican celebration. This is a favorite.