earning his keep

I've been venting about Logan's behavior a lot lately, and I haven't given Dylan equal air time even though he's been just as challenging at certain times. Whoever said parenting is full time work was certainly not kidding. Somedays I'm ready to go to bed by 2 p.m.

Dylan just turned six. Now I don't know if this behavior is a normal six thing, or if its also paired with having a challenging younger brother who demands a lot of our attention. But we've been seeing some sibling rivalry like never before over these past couple of months. The good news is, Dylan is a pleaser. He usually does very well when he knows his good behavior will be recognized and praised. He's also totally old enough to be held responsible for his actions, and completely knows the difference between right and wrong (something we're still working on with Logan).

I was lamenting about the woes of this recent naughty behavior to my beloved New Jersey cousin, K, this weekend. K is also a teacher, with two sons of her own. She had the brilliant idea of implementing a reward chart for Dylan. As I've talked about many times here before, Dylan's favorite thing in the whole world is Wii. And we find ourselves constantly taking it away from him when he acts up. So the idea behind the chart was to make him do good things to earn time to play Wii or computer games. Fantastic! Instead of using the Wii for negative reinforcement (a cycle we've gotten stuck in), turn it into a priviledge earned for good behavior.

So we sat down this afternoon with Dylan, and developed a list of 10 things he can do to earn points toward playing Wii. The 10 things are a combination of behavioral and chores to help us, and he totally contributed to the ideas. Behaviorally, the goal is to get him to help Logan more often instead of doing things that result in Logan crying. We also put one on there about trying new foods, since this is an area we constantly struggle with him.

All day, he's been by my side asking what he can do next to earn another point. Once he gets 10 points (and he writes down the tally himself), he earns 30 minutes of whatever Wii game he wants. The 10 items on the chart are the things he should always do, but he can also seek out other things to help me (like today I washed all of our sheets and he helped me remake all the beds, thus earning a point). Also, if he is bad or doesn't listen, he gets a point taken away, putting Wii further away.

I'm totally excited about this new little system, and so is Dylan. And, he tried grilled swordfish and polenta for dinner! I'll report back in later this week with our progress.