Kvelling about how clever my children are

[drwex]

If you're not into people talking about their kids then just move along, this is not the posting for you...

The mind of the three-year-old:
On Monday Pygment brought L to have a picnic with Daddy. The picnic area at work includes a round fountain with a gravel area around it. Our little activity bug couldn't actually sit and have a picnic. He needed to eat a bite, then run around the fountain. I ran with him a couple of times and he proudly declared that Daddy couldn't catch him. Pygment asked if he could catch Daddy and he proceeded to do try. I dodged to the side. Giggles, try again, I dodge again. More serious now, try again. I dodge.

L: "Daddy, could you stop moving to the side please?"
Me: "OK"
L: *grab* "Gotcha!"

The mind of the six-year-old:
Last night K lost the privilege of the usual bedtime stories due to some random and unrelated misbehavior. While cleaning up his room he found a reward card (*) for an extra bedtime story and asked if he could use that card to get a story. I agreed. My kid, shrewd? Oy. The desire to reward clever thinking won out over the desire to enforce discipline.


(*) Reward cards are K-chosen from a deck of pre-agreed rewards given in response to good interactions or exceptional coping. he doesn't get them just for following the ordinary rules.

Comments

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

I got the idea from behavioral management charts we would do at school for the really difficult kids. They would list 3 goals and if they got a certain number of points (awarded by their teachers during the day) they'd get a prize of their choosing from the box in nthe social worker's office. We had a chart for a while that gave stars for goals during a day and if Kfir got a full week of stars he got a quarter for goal completed that week. Then he started changing the goals mid week and trying to play the system. This way the cards are given by us to reward good general behavior so that he sees that making good choices has good results. A lot of the cards are bonus things from what we limit (like extra juice, extra TV or computer time, hot cocoa..) and thus it lets him bend the rules.