Thursday, May 17, 2012

Bribing starts at an early age

In today's busy world, we all try to bribe kids with their favorite things when we want them to do certain things our way and fast. After trying that and telling stories and making plans, we were still having hard time getting the kids to wake up early on week day mornings and brush at night. So, Gaurav and I were discussing how to get them to do the daily things without any struggle - and then I came up with the coin system.

In early April, we announced that they would get money (coins) for different daily tasks. At the end of each month, we will go and celebrate with whatever money they have earned. So, the deal was like this :

Prompt wake up in the morning : 5 cents
Brush and shower                     : 5 cents
Brush at night                            : 5 cents
Nail biting                                 : -1 cent
Being good / helping out            : BONUS !!

We were little skeptical if this would work, but to our surprise it worked like magic.
We gave them their own piggybanks where they could put coins in everyday.. and we started giving out the coins every morning and night. Once they got the hang of it, the morning and night struggles went away. We even rewarded them with bonus coins when they did something nice.

In early May, we counted the coins.. both of them had about 4$ each and they chose to go Chuck E Cheese to celebrate.So, we went to Chuck E Cheese today (figured weekday would be easier than weekend) and we all had a blast. The kids exchanged their money for tokens and had fun. We then had pizza and then wrapped up the evening by exchanging the tickets with goodies (Kavya got cotton candy and Ishaan got smarties).

I hope the charm of coins continues for some more time..

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