Responsibility and Reward

Ah yes, the new "manage the kids spreadsheet."  This was Karin's brainchild for which I happily volunteered a few ideas and my creative services to build the form.  It is a weekly checklist to try and get the kids to do a few required things, at the required times.  Things that you can easily forget to do...like.... attaching your head before leaving the house, making your lunch in the morning, packing said lunch in your actual backpack so it makes it into your actual mouth at lunchtime, breathing, etc....  Our nerdy kids have picked this one right up.  Friday night - they came running down before bed enthused...no....excited...about adding up their score for the week thus far to see where they were against the reward chart.  On a Friday night.

Now the reward sheet is pretty sweet.  In fact after seeing this, many of you may start trying to cash in "checks" to do some of these since it involves time with Karin or I - or both.  Things like play a game with mommy & daddy after bedtime, take a walk with mommy/daddy, have mommy make you a breakfast of your choice one morning, play tennis, etc....  The kids have enjoyed the time with us - and we have enjoyed the time with them.  I would say it has greatly improved the success rate in taking care of some of these basics that we were struggling with before.