Many years ago, my husband and I read a book called Parenting with Love and Logic. The premise is that in addition to giving a child logical consequences for misbehavior, you empathize with them for how they feel having to deal with the consequences. Although we wouldn't use the word "bummer" as much as they recommend (as in, "You haven't finished your homework, yet? That's a bummer, because I know you really wanted to go to the movie with us."), we like the general idea and have been incorporating bits of it through the years.
I remember on part of it that seemed odd and extreme upon first reading, albeit logical. In the past week we've started using it ourselves, and I actually think it will work.
First, two facts about Curly Girl: 1) She recently started getting an allowance because she turned five, and 2) She has a tendency to ask for food or drink, contaminate it in some way, and then decide she doesn't want it anymore. Since it's contaminated, no one else wants it and we have to throw it out.
I was making macaroni and cheese for one of the younglings for lunch the other day, and she said she wanted some, too. Since mac & cheese is her favorite, I didn't think that would be a problem. She took one bite and declared that she was not hungry anymore. Has any of you ever tried to reheat macaroni and cheese? It's not great, and I knew she wouldn't eat it later. Somehow, the two facts stated above converged in my mind and I told her she had to eat it by suppertime or she would owe me 4o cents. Understandably, she looked confused. I explained that I had to pay for the food and if she was going to waste it, then she had to pay me back. She ended up giving me 40 cents at bedtime.
The next day, she poured herself a huge cup of orange juice (she's not allowed in the fridge, either, but that's another issue for another day...). She took a sip, declared that she hates orange juice and poured it down the bathroom sink. I told her that she needed to pay for that juice, let her see me figuring it out on the calculator, and told her that she owed me 37 cents. Beginning to catch on that paying me means she has less money, she refused to go get her money until I told her she wouldn't get her allowance until she settled up.
She paid me, and hasn't' done anything like that since. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
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7 comments:
Wow, I'm impressed. Aside from the behaviour benefits, the sooner kids realise how money and responsibility go together the better.
Yeah... lots of good lessons all rolled into one right there! Nice one.
Nicely done!
Good idea!
Rian will have to use this one...
Ata has liked this so much, she has repeated the story to a number of people. Mr Ata attempted to apply the approach to mess. "You could say, alright, you tracked in that dirt - it's gonna cost you 20 cents in carpet cleaner."
"What?" said Ata "Charge 'em for time! Let's see, $30/hour, 15 minutes to clean it up..."
"No," said Mr Ata, shaking his head sadly at Ata's misapplication of principle. Or possibly at Ata's overestimation of the value of her time. "If they were way behind by the end of the day, it'd never work. They'd just say, well, I'm so far in debt it's the bank's problem, not mine."
Mr. Ata has the right idea. Since her allowance is so little, I want the cost to her to be real, not so big that it bankrupts her and leaves me with no leverage, and yet big enough that she notices it's gone. If she were older with a bigger allowance and tracking in dirt was an ongoing issue, I would certainly charge cleaning fees.
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