Yet another plan......

So in yet another genius attempt to get the kids to behave (ie: go to sleep without fits, sleep through the night etc.....it's not like they're setting the house on fire or stealing cars....yet), we have come up with a new plan.

The boys have a giant blackboard on the wall in their room that we painted with blackboard paint when we moved in. We drew a huge chart on that wall with the days of the week and privileges that they get across the top (For bonus points: it's a large spreadsheet that is color-coded per child, see if you can guess which parent had this brainstorm...). When one of the kids starts to misbehave, they get a warning, if they keep it up they get an "X". They have to choose what they lose and when that week- from after school TV to dessert to scooter, etc. They then have to put the "X" on the chart and it lives there in the room with them all week.

So far, as with most of our "parenting" ideas, I can't tell if it's made a difference or not. Things at bedtime are definitely better than they were before The Chart. But we still have fits, we still have timeouts, and I'm still nowhere near as Zen about it as I should be...so who knows.

The one thing The Chart did was get us the above photo. When drawing the chart, we told the boys that if they could go a whole week with a clean chart, they would get a special treat (without really discussing or even thinking about what that would be....I mean come on, a whole week? It would never happen right?). But lo and behold, a week or so ago, Jake did it. A whole week with no "X", so we had to come up with a special treat. Coincidentally, Jake's school was closed two days this week for teacher workdays and I had to take Friday off to play daddy day care. He and I decided that his special thing would be to go to the batting cages.

The slowest cage was still a little too fast for him at 45MPH. But he hung in there, didn't get frustrated and swung at every pitch (makes a Daddy proud). We then played some mini-golf (he has a hockey-like golfing style - luckily it was a Friday and we were the only two on the course), hit some video games and came home and watched the Speed Racer movie, which he loved. A good Daddy-Jake day, and a fitting reward for a clean chart. The chart is filled up now, so who knows if it will ever happen again, but it was fun while it lasted.