Well bowl me over!

Since about January of this year, Ira has had a chore chart. His chores are not anything spectacular, mainly just "getting around and ready for the day" type jobs: gathering his breakfast dishes, getting dressed, making his bed, etc... He was allowed to play once he finished his chores... well... that works if your kid is motivated by playing. Mine on the other hand, was plenty satisfied dawdling around ALL MORNING doing his chores. I'm still not exactly sure how that happens, but let me tell you, it happened all the TIME. And I was sick of it!

So I thought and thought about what I could do to get Ira to do his chores faster. Problem is, the kid doesn't have a lot of fluff in his life (tv, candy, video games, etc.), which translates to: "there is nothing that I can take away from Ira to make him do his chores faster." And stumpedness followed for a few days...until I got to thinking that that would be negative reinforcement anyway, so I tried to think of something positive to reinforce getting chores done more quickly. Again, not real into the fluff in our house, so I didn't really want to reward him with candy, dessert, videos, etc. So finally (I believe I was in the shower - you know, the one place where mamas occasionally get to spend a few minutes by themselves... sometimes...) I thought of a solution!!

I decided that I would set a timer for 25 minutes for Ira to do his chores. However many minutes were left on the timer when Ira got done with his chores was how many pennies he got to put in his "Ira's Bowling Money" jar that I made for him (an old baby food jar.) If the timer ran out before he was finished with his chores, we used a timer that counts up and the number of minutes on it when he finished was how many pennies he had to pay us. The first couple days I put more time on the timer so that he could build up a buffer of pennies in case he had to pay us. You know what, it has worked AWESOMELY!!! Sometimes we pay him, sometimes he pays us, but he always gets his chores done in a prompt manner now, so I am THRILLED!

Now I have to take a second to share a cute story. One morning, I was nursing Ruby in our bed to lay her down for her first nap of the day when Ira finished eating breakfast (which is when he does his chores.) He came in and whispered that he was finished, so I whispered back to go ahead and start on his chores. (I figured I'd be nice and let him get a head start, then start the timer for 25 minutes when I finished nursing Ruby - you know, a little reward for if he really did start his chores.) Well, he leaves the room and I hear "rrrrrrrrrr" (chair dragging across the kitchen floor) "beep" (timer starting.) Then he comes in again whispering, "I started the timer, mom." Me: "Thank you, Ira. How long did you set it for?" Ira: "It ends in five." Me:"Twenty-five?" Ira: "No, NINETY-FIVE!" I could hardly stifle my laugh! Seriously, what could I do? I let him keep the 95 minutes on the timer and when he finally got done with his chores he earned 66 pennies! I think he told everyone we saw that day (and we saw a lot because we went shopping) that he earned 66 pennies... it was just too cute! He needed the boost anyway, it takes a lot of pennies to fill a baby food jar!

The point of this whole schpeel was so that I could share pictures of us BOWLING! After a month or six weeks or something, Ira finally filled his penny jar and we all went bowling!