Definition of Insanity...

....trying to inspire kids to do chores. Now, I'm using the word 'inspire' loosely here, but seriously! Ever since school started back, it has been a nightmare! We were awesome during the summer because we said, "You have until noon to get your chores done. If everyone gets them done, we'll go do something fun: swim, ice skate, movies, friends/cousins, etc." It was great - we slowed down when Corbin burned his hands, but it still worked well.

Then school started. And you would have thought we transplanted their brains. All cooperativeness and get-'er-doness went out the window. It has been a little maddening - a lot of reminding, too much screaming, punishments, etc. It was NOT working!

So back to the definition of insanity:

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Yup - to a 'T'. Still trying to the same approach we have for years. Do it - great, you get some privileges....pretty much whatever came to mind and not necessarily the most consistent. Don't do it - Mom's head would spin around three times and unpleasantness would spew forth. Excuse the imagery, but this is exactly what how I felt.

I reached out to friends on Facebook and asked how they did it. A co-worker from my last job reminded me again of www.myjobchart.com. This website allows you to put in your kids chores, give the chores points, then put in rewards that can be redeemed with those points. Simple. Straight-forward. But I had not taken the time to really set it up. When we found out that one of our boys was getting a big 'F' two weeks into the term, we decided that something had to be tracked and that he needed to be incentivized to do better. So, I put in the whole hour that it took to set everything up for each of the kids and Voula!

Granted it's only been a couple days, but the kids are ripping it up! Leon gets daily texts when the kids earn rewards. He can now come home and praise them for getting their chores done without having to even check up on it and ask questions. He mentions it as he walks in the door. We both can see what types of things motivate the kids. Right now, it's time with Dad. That was humbling. Neither of us knew that they were really wanting that, so we didn't set up time to make sure they got it.

We also rotated the chores a little bit. Michael is now doing laundry, Corbin is cleaning bathrooms and garbage/recycle, Kohner is doing dishes/kitchen, Derrick cleans out the kitty litter and sets the table (after washing his hands of course), and now Eowyn has a daily chore of organizing the shoes in our coat closet. It's so great!

If you are struggling with how to recognize kids for what they are doing right (and take the load off your shoulders of keeping track of everything), I highly, highly recommend this site.

Cherry on top: We all sat down tonight for a couple hours and the kids redeemed their rewards, the house was clean, I hadn't yelled (mostly), and Leon knew his kids wanted to be with him. Seriously....who could ask for more?