TRY THIS AT HOME

"Hey, who took out the trash?  I wanted to do it!"

Motivation may start with avoiding pain and eventually move to autonomy, mastery, and purpose.  In between however, we may need to provide some extrinsic rewards to get things moving in the right direction.

Several years ago, we implemented a system in our home to encourage our girls to do things without being asked.  The results were nothing short of miraculous.  We decided to do away with allowance and to provide the kids with an opportunity to earn as much, or as little, as they wanted to.  We called a family meeting and introduced our new chore system and replaced the American dollar with a new form of currency called Chicky Chips.  We brought the poker chips out and deemed each color a different value.  Then we introduced the Chicky Chip value of chores and wah lah!  The system was in place. 

I have to admit that I do giggle to myself when I hear the kids arguing in the other room that “It’s not fair, I was going to gather the garbage!”  At the end of each month, we hold a family auction where you can, either cash your chips in for money, cash them in for goods or do a little of both.  The goods are anything that we normally would have just bought for the kids such as, make up, lotion, hair products, a favorite snack, books from the school book fair, etc.  At times, we have put very large items in the auction that have motivated them to work harder, and required them to work several months to earn.  By far the most valuable items available for purchase are privileges. 

I made up several privilege vouchers and had them laminated so that they would be sturdy and could be used over and over.  The vouchers include privileges that they can use if they want to play with a friend, get ungrounded a day early, have a sleep over, have date night with mom or dad, etc.  This forces them to plan in advance, how many days each week/month they want to play/hang out with friends and also requires them to place a value on privileges.  It has been phenomenal because they have come to realize that privileges are earned, not something they are entitled to.  If they lose their vouchers, they are out of luck.  It sounds harsh, but they work so hard to earn them, we want them to feel responsible to take care of them. 

Parenting and motivating your teens / kids can be a challenging venture.  Hopefully you can shake things up at home with how you routinely try to motivate.  Make some of these ideas your own or come up with something original.  Do write in and let us know what you’ve found that works.

Kristen Moyes

Account Representative