Allowance!

A few weeks ago we were all sitting at dinner and after telling Chase for about the 20th time to sit on his chair and finish eating, Craig and I came up with an idea.  Rewards have always worked for Chase (to stop biting, potty training, etc) so we thought if we wanted to change a behavior then let's make it a reward system.  We asked him if he wanted to start earning allowance so he could buy his own toys.  He was super excited and we told him we would give him the details that night.

We decided to choose 2 things that we have been having trouble with to be part of how he could earn allowance.  (I don't really believe in giving allowance for things your kids are already doing.  Example....Chase is awesome at cleaning up toys and he likes it so I can't imagine giving him allowance for it.) 

Anyway, our 2 issues lately have been :

1) Waking up for school and getting dressed without a fight

2) Sitting down in his chair and eating dinner (he always runs around and gets up and it leads to spills, riling up Brady, and it would take like 45 minutes to eat, etc)

So we told Chase he could start earning 2 quarters a day.  1 if he got up easily for us and 1 if he sat in his chair the whole dinner and ate well.  Well it's WORKING!!

The first few days it was such a huge change because he popped right out of bed and got dressed and he sits down during dinner and eats so well!  Yay!

Here is the chart Chase & I made.... 

I couldn't find a pre-made one that had what we needed to I bought a piece of felt and Chase helped me glue the pipe cleaners down to make boxes.  I used puffy paint for the letters.  Then we traced quarters on a green piece of felt and cut them out.  There is velcro on each space and velcro on each green "quarter" so Chase gets to put it on if he earns it!

We took this picture Friday night and you can see the only day we missed was Monday night because Brady ate faster and was playing and Chase really wanted to play.  He got up and said "I don't want the quarter" and went and played.  Lol - oh well, at least he understood the consequences :)

Saturday morning we took Chase to buy a toy with his own money!!!  He had about $10 (he already had some money from grandparents, etc) so he added the $2.25 he earned that week and was ready to shop!  Of course he kept pointing out $30 toys so we had to help him find a few things in his price range :)  At the checkout the sales lady was so sweet and was so patient as Chase counted out $9.20 for his first hard earned toys!!

Showing me his Target bag and his wallet :)

Ta- Daa ... a new Lego and a toy jet!

Chase was so proud of himself and it was fun to watch him go through this experience! 

He is ready to earn more money and maybe save for a BIG Lego next time :)