Question
For the past couple of years, my husband and I have been using "charts" with our two kids, now ages 7 (girl) and 9 (boy). The charts were used primarily for when the kids "forgot" to do their chores or daily tasks instead of for behavior problems, which are not nearly as common with them.
We understand that compliance from children comes much more from delivery than from the manipulation of reward and punishment. However, for many reasons, we would like to switch to a different consequence system.
Our kids have daily tasks such as brush teeth, keep desk tidy, put away fresh laundry, fill-up school water bottles, etc... and daily assigned chores such as sweep/vacuum kitchen and dining room or clean bathrooms. It is the daily tasks that they are "forgetting" more often. I've made checklists for them and they've made checklists for themselves, but they still often dawdle while doing tasks or get distracted with books. For instance, while I'm cleaning up the breakfast dishes, my daughter is supposed to get out her hair brush/hair bands/ribbons, etc... so I can do her hair when I'm done. If she is done with that before I am done, she should be packing up her backpack and lunchbox instead of taking out a toy. These tasks are done throughout the day at the appropriate time instead of all at once like their chores. It is difficult to set the timer for them because many of them take less than a minute.
It's hard to find privileges to take away. If they can't play outside, for example, they just find something else to do. They very rarely have friends over and they don't care about TV or electronics. Since they are out of school now, I was thinking about taking away a chunk of playtime for every task they "forget" to do. For instance, if my daughter left her clean clothes in a pile on her floor, she'd lose 15-30 minutes of playtime and instead do an additional chore. What do you think about that?
Our son has a strong tendency to get stressed out by the daily activities. In his mind, a 15 minute chore will "take all day!" He gets mad at himself and want to hurt himself when he has consequences. We have had to ease up on some of the consequences because we thought he would truly do something to hurt himself. He had a lot of pressure at school and he has a lot of anxiety due to dealing with a very severe food allergy. The allergy significantly limits his freedom and so losing even more freedoms makes him feel like he's in a pressure cooker.
Please let me know what would be the best course to take. I want my kids to stop "forgetting" to do these daily tasks and efficiently use little chunks of time throughout the day.
Thank you.
