Trying to Develop Motivation and Responsibility

Welcome to my homegrown motivation system. My hope is to encourage the girls to be more responsible and internally motivated. The heart of the system is the flower picks. Each pick (Dollar Tree flowers glued to popsicle sticks) has a chore/responsibility written on it. When my girl finishes the pick she moves it to the can for completed chores. Each pick has a certain number of minutes attached to it. The girls earn minutes for the privilege of screen time. They have to do it without reminders and if they move the pick without finishing, I get to return it to the original can.

Because school is so many things, I broke out school on clothespins. Each day, I put the subjects for the day on the girls' side of the clipboard by attaching it to the ribbon. As they finish the subject, they get to remove the clothespin and put it in the can. When they are done with school, they can move the school pick.

Attitude is important too. If the day ends up to be a battle of attitudes, Mom gets to move a pick with a bug on it into the girls' bouquet. A bug means that they do not get any of the minutes they earned and they don't get any screen time that day. They spend twenty minutes of screen time a day and they can accumulate more for the weekend.

We've been doing this for about four weeks. It helps in some areas but not so much in others. We do like that it is very concrete. We will continue to fine tune it. If there are any huge developments, I will try to let you know. :)