ok, i seriously suck at regular housework…i mean i do it all the time but i can’t seem to maintain anything. and i’ve not been really great about consistency with the children with chores. i want to, and i really mean to…i just suck at it. i’m starting to really get that i suck at consistency in most anything and so i have been finding ways to make things work without it relying upon me being consistent about anything.
so, that’s exactly why i got the program times up kidz for my computer…so that i don’t have to hover over my children to keep them from being on the computer all day. also to avoid the fighting. so that’s worked fabulously, and the kids now have resigned themselves to the program shutting them down after an hour. (with recorded warnings at 30min, 15min, 5min and 1min) love it!
so then i finally came up with another idea to help get the chores done. going by what dr phil calls “finding your child’s currency”, i figured out that for my kids, its computer time. i have been using the computer timer to remove time when they are misbehaving…but it finally occurred to me to make them earn their time on the computer.
so….instead of them getting 2 hours of computer time free each day (with an hour in between each hour, so only an hour at each sitting)…i took off an hour. so they only get 1 hour play time free. the other hour, if they want it, they have to earn. i also added that they have to wait 4 hours in between sittings…to get them away from the computer during a chunk of time during the day.
how do they earn it? they have to do their chores. if they do half their chores, they get an extra half an hour. if they do all, they get an extra full hour.
well, this isn’t working super great for tyren…because, well, he’s 4. so he still needs a lot of guidance and supervision for chores…but maeven…wow! its seriously working well!
not only that but i figured out that i need to rotate the chores to help keep them from getting old. this was something that i hated as a child. i basically had the same chores assigned to me my entire childhood. i didn’t want to do that to my children, so i planned to rotate them and finally did a little and maeven was talking about how much more she likes her chores now! she just started talking about it on her own, so i was really pleased!
she ROCKS at doing laundry, i must say! i’ve given her laundry as part of her chores, broken down into steps, so one chore is to put a load in the washer, one is to move a load from washer to dryer, one is to take a load out of dryer and sort into piles, and another is to fold and put away all her own clothes. (not necessarily in that order) she really has been an amazing help!
ROFL, she just told me that she’s almost done w/her chores and i said “really? all 9 of them?” (they have 1 chore per year of their life)…and she said “well, its easy when most of your chores are laundry!” LOL!
so are there days when they still don’t do chores, and choose to just not get that hour on the computer? sure. and that’s ok, because i don’t do all my work every day either…and i figure its win-win because the days they don’t do the chores, they have less computer time–which is good too! 🙂
we’ll keep working on more consistency, but for now i was just really happy watching my little girl go to work on her chores today. 🙂 another proud mama moment.
Leave a Reply