By Heather

Our plan is fairly easy to use the kids end up doing all the work. Trust me they'll remind you! To start here is an over view of what this program entiles. My kids earn tokens for chores and behavior. The save up their tokens to purchase rewards. The real kicker is that they can also lose tokens for misbehaving. To get started you'll have to do a little brainstorming, I will give you a few examples to help.

The first step is to decide what the kids can do to earn these tokens and how many tokens they can earn per chore. A few examples of what we have are:

making their bed = 2 tokens
keeping toys picked up = 1 token
putting away laundry = 1 token
working out conflicts = 2 tokens

Determine what chores you think your child will be able to do and allow them to earn tokens for them. My kids receive extra tokens for doing chores without having to be told. (I highly recommend this!) Doing things around the house for tokens helps to make them feel more independent. Think of it as preparing them for their future in a job. They do something - they get paid for it.

We also have a behavior chart where they get different color stars based on their behavior for that day. This is completely optional. It helps! We base their behavior on how they are at home, at school, and anytime we go out. At the end of the week, depending on the stars they have, they receive tokens for good behavior.

We also made a list of ways they can lose tokens. Some examples would be: lying = lose of 3 tokens, fighting = lose of 2 tokens, not following directions = lose of 2 tokens. This list is completely up to you. You determine what behaviors are unacceptable and how many tokens they loose if they show this behavior.

Now the kids favorite part - the rewards. It can be a little difficult sometimes to decide on what to offer and how much to offer it for.(Ask the kids for their input on things they enjoy doing, but don't get to do often.) Here is how we decided: first we made a list of things the kids could do that wouldn't cost us any money, then we made a list of things that would cost very little money (like just gas to go across town, or movie rentals), the next list cost a little more but no more than we were willing to spend on our kids in any given week. Our rewards are divided into catagories of daily and weekly.

Example of daily rewards would be:
30 min. of tv time = 2 tokens
watch a dvd = 3 tokens
These are just a couple of rewards they can purchas on a daily basis. The rest of our rewards are purchased once a week on Friday. Here are a few examples of these rewards:

Example of weekly rewards:
play in sprinkler =15 tokens
go to park =45 tokens
go to theatre =90 tokens
have a friend sleepover = 45 tokens
buy a new toy($20 or less) = 90 tokens

Sit down, make a few list, talk to your kids and have fun with it. (Tokens can be purchased cheap at dollar stores or I found some at Wal-mart.) If you need further help you can go to my web site at http://cutefrog5@blogspot.com Thank you and good luck!

I am a stay at home mom, recently on my second marriage. My husband and I both had kids from a previous marriage. At first we had a few problems getting the kids to work together. We brainstormed up this wonderful idea that has worked wonderfully so far and I'd like to share it with you.