Discipline

Disciplining Owen has been a challenge to say the least. He is just a mini version of Chris so they butt heads on a daily basis. He's very strong-willed and very active. We've tried all kinds of methods and read books and articles on disciplining boys. I put together a system that took ideas from several sources and it has been working for us so I thought I'd share.

I took an idea from the website I Can Teach My Child and added in a little kindergarten discipline style and this is what we came up with:

I am not artistic or crafty so it's not the best looking thing ever and its taken a beating already so I need to redo the poster. Anyway, the gist of our system is this: Owen has rules based on our expectations for him at this age and 3 age-appropriate chores. He can earn green sticks when he does his chores or shows good behavior and he is given red sticks when he breaks the rules or misbehaves. The sticks are placed in the chart at the top (this particular day he had 3 red sticks and only 1 green...bless his heart!) throughout the day. At the end of the day we count the sticks and if he has more green than red he earns a quarter. The 3 jars at the bottom give him choices on what to do with his money. The green is for "give", the red is for "save", and the blue is for "spend".

We've been doing this for about 3 weeks now and my sweet Jesus loving little boy has chosen to put his money in the "give" jar every day so far. He takes the money to church each week and puts it in the offering plate.

This has really worked for us so far. He is highly motivated to earn those green sticks and a red stick just breaks his heart. It's a good math lesson at the end of the day when we talk about 'more' and 'less' and count the sticks up.