Spurred by a recent visit to Target in which we found it impossible to steer past the toy aisle without the young lad going berserk, I devised a plan. No, you can’t have everything you see and everything you want. These things are privileges, and you must earn them.
Okay, so I tried to put it in terms of 3-1/2 year old language skills. The Good Boy Chart. I made a set of magnets with happy pictures and a chart with ten spaces to fill. Good boy deeds earn magnets. But they can also be forfeited. So it’s one step forward, two steps back. But he gets it! So all week he’s been working on earning stars, and he is now very close to earning a reward. He wants a Batman mask.
Last night he opted to continue with his bad behavior, and have a star removed. It was quite amazing to me, that he weighed the cost of the transgression, and decided he’d rather go on doing what he was doing, which was something he wasn’t supposed to be doing, but which was FUN! …and forfeit a star.
I can see we’re going to have our work cut out for us.
We did remove the star, then he decided he’d go ahead and stop doing what he wasn’t supposed to be doing. He wanted the star back, because he’d stopped, but I explained that he had had his chance, and now he has to earn it back again.
I’m a tough mamma-jamma.
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My 8 year old nephew is spending the weekend, and my little guy’s behavior slides drastically during such times. He (my nephew) is the sweetest boy, but I think my son just gets too wound up and excited to have him here. Consequently, there were meltdowns and a significant loss of stars. This morning we worked hard doing jobs to earn them back. Sadly, Target was freshly out of the coveted Batman mask, but happily, they had a bazillion other things to choose from, and my little one was tickled pink to get to choose… …a Transformer -Barricade- which also, as luck would have it, was marked down to $5 from $20. Woot.
