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Friday, August 13, 2010

Growing Pains Can Feel Good

Our 3-year-old, Sophie, has a personality like Keri in many ways. This only becomes a difficulty when they butt heads. So to make life easier and more fun for all, we have moved into a positive reinforcement behavior program.

Sophie has daily chores which currently include her morning routine, making her bed (pulling sheets up), feeding the cat, tidying up the playroom, and her bedtime routine. She checks them off as she accomplishes these tasks. When it's checked off, she gets to put a pom pom in her jar. She can get pom poms as we "catch her being good." I always keep a few pom poms in my pocket to help remind her even when we are out on the town. When the jar is full, we have a super-fun activity with mom and dad such as playing with silly string, making a blanket fort, swinging her in a blanket, baking something together, freeze dancing, etc.
These are her "Good Morning" and "Good Night" sticks. It helps her move through her routine with a bit more focus, thus quicker. It also helps us as parents to do certain tasks. When she finishes a task, she flips it over for the happy face. If she has all 4 sticks flipped, she can go mark it off on her chore chart. Morning tasks: personal morning prayer, brush teeth, get dressed, and fix hair. Bedtime tasks: put on pajamas, brush teeth, read scriptures, and personal evening prayer. Today, Sophie reaped the benefits of good behavior. She chose to earn pom poms so she could make a volcano with mom and dad.

Yes, we still provide natural consequences for poor behavior but this program has helped us as parents to be more patient and just have more fun helping our little girl.
Our mild mannered Rhys apparently fooled us. We fear his sweet disposition was just the calm before the storm. He still isn't walking unassisted but he is climbing--on toys, on furniture. He also gets into cupboards. We never even had to put on child safety locks with Sophie. I think we will now. He is also becoming quite adept in tantrum throwing. Luckily most of those are short-lived. And he is down to one nap a day.

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