First, I'm well-aware that this is not something I was remotely close to "inventing" and that it's something plenty of people recommend for exactly the situation; however, I hadn't been prepared for how well it worked for us and I'd like to share our experience.We are both working from home, and we also have a 2 year old. They're both boys and are exactly like any stereotype of 2 and 6 year old boys might be. They're all over the place, being super cute and friendly one moment and then beating on each other the next.I was Dxed with ADD as a kid and got a new Dx of ADHD-C a few years ago, and the 6 year old reminds me of me as a kid...he can only focus on things he likes, and while he's incredibly smart, anything that he doesn't understand immediately he gets frustrated with and abandons. He LOVES math but sees a lot of other things as a waste of time, and doesn't have the patience to write anything out, and when he does he has super sloppy handwriting because he's in a rush to get it over with.We've tried a variety of things, both before and during quarantine. His teacher used a color chart where each kid started on Green, but could go down to yellow or red, or up to purple. I adopted that and made it where if he got green at the end of the day, he could watch TV the next day, and purple let him play Wii. Yellow meant he could watch TV only for a little bit in the afternoon, and red was no screen time outside of schoolwork.That worked a bit, but one thing I realized is that once he got down to red, he would just be a hellion because he knew there was nothing worse to get, but also when he was on purple he'd often stop being good because there was nothing higher to get, either.I found a couple rolls of pennies while we were cleaning the other day, and figured I'd try something out that I'd seen on an old BBC documentary about ADHD.I told him that for basically anything he did that was good, he would get a penny. Make your bed? Penny. Brush your teeth without being nagged? Penny. Clean up? Penny. Read a new book? Penny. Play nice with your brother? Penny.Then I made a chart that showed the rewards he could "buy" with his new-found riches. Play wii in the morning? Pay me 20 pennies before bed. TV is 10. Having tablet time while his brother naps is 15. Dessert is 10 for something like a piece of chocolate and 15 for a popsicle or small bit of ice cream. We have jelly bellies for potty training his brother and he wanted some. I told him I'd sell him 2 beans per penny.He has spent most of his waking time the last week finding every little thing he can to earn pennies, often without us asking. I'll turn around and he'll be there and say that he cleaned the playroom. Now, he straight up asks for pennies for everything that he does, but whatever...usually it's actually worth one.I made a list of things that lose him a penny, but so far he's not lost too many. They're things like hitting his brother or riding his bike outside of where we can see him. Just "being bad" in general doesn't lose one, it just prevents him from getting them, which is something he's very driven for right now.There wasn't enough granularity with the colors, and the rate of reward/punishment was too spaced out. With this, he can be constantly thinking about ways to be good to earn, and I'm happy to shower him with tokens in return.If you've been struggling with behavior of your kids old enough to grasp this, I suggest you give it a shot. Pennies are an easy token you probably have laying around, but Amazon has pretty cheap generic plastic tokens, or you could use plastic marbles or whatever else.I'm happy to answer any questions about any of the details if anyone cares. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/3f2zvG3
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