Making Allowances

For a little while now, we've been experimenting with a color clip chart for discipline and allowance. It was Tessa's suggestion because this is similar to the behavior chart they have at school. It's pretty basic. At home, they start every day on green and move up for being good, obeying, doing good in school and doing chores. They move down for whining, complaining, fighting and not doing what we ask.

At the end of each day if they've made it to purple and stay there, they get a little pay out. Sometimes a dollar, sometimes just loose change that's hanging around. (With Charley that's easy, give him four pennies and he's happy.)

They've been responding REALLY well to it and raking in some dough. Tessa has been super excited about buying her own stuff. She had collected enough money from Christmas, allowance, and Papaw's report card bonus to buy herself her own La La Loopsey doll.

Then later on, she spent $3 buying herself some brightly colored scented soaps for bathtime.

This week I planted the seed that she should use her money to buy a game that the whole family could play together. Okay I more than just suggested...when her eyes started to wander toward Barbies, I said no.

We needed a new game or two.

They also wanted to buy their own drinks. Charley spent $1.35 on a hot chocolate and Tessa opted to spend the same on a Sprite. Since our kids rarely drink soda this is really a treat. She kept saying...it's so SPICY!

And Tessa used her money to buy us "Go Fish". Like the old card game but with a cool fishing boat and fish shaped cards.

I also donated a few more bucks towards buying us an Uno deck. Tessa really got into it.

Could it be that we've finally moved past the hide-all-the-board-games-out-of-reach-for-fear-of-them-destroying-them phase and into the phase where we regularly play games? And the kids are finally old enough to actually follow rules?

Oh man I hope so, that seems like a fun phase.

Actually, we've been doing some home re-organizing since fall to make everything more easily accesible and efficient for everyone, including the kids. It's an ongoing project that I dare say is almost finished. More on that later.

But the games are finally where the kids can access them anytime, as well as the art supplies. Those were always put away before and only to be used with Mom's permission. Now they can just grab their own crayons and draw whenever they want.

Look out walls.

If you're feeling brave that is.