Monday, June 18, 2012

Tired of Nagging your children?!

I am sure that no one ever has trouble with nagging their children to do something or to stop doing something! Well as awesome as my kids are I ask them to stop doing something or to go do something over and over and over. So I'm trying something new. I read an article about a mom who put "stop" signs around her house to remind her kids to do things. She stopped reminding them to put their clothes in the dirty clothes box or clean their trash out of the car. If she had to go and pick up clothes on the floor etc she simply tore of an "oops!" strip from the bottom of the page. At the end of each week the kids were rewarded for each "oops!" strip still on the paper. For example each "oops!" strip was worth 10 minutes of TV time (which was a real treat at her house). When she saw keeping the room clean etc was becoming habit she moved her stop signs to another area that needed work. So I've decided to try it out. We have a problem with "potty" talk and name calling so I've hung a "stop" sign from the fan in the living room. (not attractive at all and kind of in the way but that's the point, everyone can see it) The kids have been told anytime I hear inappropriate language I will rip off an "oops!" sign. I also hung one in the doorway of the closet to remind them to make their beds and keep the room clean. Each of my "oops!" strips is worth 5 minutes of playing the WII. (They love doing this) They were excited to see how much time they could earn to play. So no playing during the week just on saturday after minutes have been totaled. In fact they started picking up their room before I even finished my explanation. So we will see how it goes! If you have any ideas for rewards let me know. I'm looking for rewards that each strip can be worth so for example. Each strip left over is one piece of candy (ie tootsie rolls) they can have when we go to the movies. If you try this at your house let me know. I'd be interested to see how it works!

4 comments:

Tabitha said...

Family Fun magazine, right?!? I just read that very same article today at gymnastics. I was thinking of trying it out too :) Especially since I just "helped" Haylie and Paige clean their room--yikes! Do you think it would work for husbands?

Alicia said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dadra said...

Yup, read the same article. We are giving it a try with making beds in the morning. Such an easy chore but a whole lot of whining happens when I ask it to get done. We'll see how this works!

MAH said...

I may have to try this out as well. Good idea! Thanks for sharing!