Our Behaviour & Pocket Money System

Like many parents out there, we have an ongoing chore getting our girls to behave.  We've tried a few methods of reward and behaviour management over the years.

For a while we had success with Nigel Latta's Ladder of Certain Doom from his book "Before Your Kids Drive You Crazy, Read This."  There's also an iPhone app.

I'm not going to explain it in lengthy detail, but essentially bad behaviour resulted in the bedtime being moved.  Bedtime could be earned back by doing a "good behaviour chore".   After a while we had to accept that it just wasn't working really well for us.  They kids didn't seem too bothered about losing some bedtime, and with homework, after school activities, dinner, etc we often forgot to send the girls to bed early when they had misbehaved.

We needed a new method, and a motivation that really worked for our girls.  Something that does really motivate both of them is pocket money.

I vaguely remembered reading a blog months ago, that talked about a behaviour chart/pocket money method that I liked.  I tried really hard to find the blog, but had no luck.  I ended up designing my own chart, working from memory.

I started by drawing up a pretty chart using PowerPoint.  I listed all the good behaviours we were hoping to see down the side of the chart.

We are having a lot of the same behaviour problems with both girls, although there are a couple of ones that are more of a problem with one girl.  In the end we decided to have the same chart for both girls.  It just seemed easier to do it that way.

Each day the girls can earn either a cross, a tick or a question mark in each box.  Good behaviour earns a tick, bad behaviour earns a cross, and marginally bad behaviour earns a question mark.  At the end of the week we use the chart to work out their pocket money.

This is the current week's chart in progress.  Today was a bit of a disaster!

Both girls start the week with £5 pocket money.  Each cross on their chart costs them 25p.  Two question marks on one day, counts as one cross.  Question marks don't add up across days, they are only added up on the day they are put on the chart.

On Sunday's we take down the week's charts and get out the bank.

We then add up the crosses and question marks, and work out each girls pocket money.  I even made a cash book for keeping a record of each week's pocket money.

So far I haven't seen a massive improvement in behaviour, but I do think it's motivating them to do better.  Hopefully they both keep improving.