CHORES!

I have been trying to get my kids to do chores since they were 3. I started with the reward chart - giving stickers. A few years later I moved to a voucher system through the guidance of creative motivations. That system worked well for a while, but it became so hard to manage. By then the kids were accustomed to doing chores, so asking them was the easy part .... GETTING them to do the chore was hard! They are in the eye-rolling, back-chatting and sighing phase. Every time I asked and was met with a negative reaction I just wanted to pile MORE chores on.

With 4 kids the amount of untidy compounds very quickly, so I needed the older two to step up and help out ... but without the micro-management.
During the summer holidays I started using chore monster.

At first it seemed boring - the kids had to log their chores, with each chore they get a spin to win a new monster. Interest peaked when they started winning different monsters, but as it is a game of chance it didn't keep their interest. Another aspect of the app is the rewards. I set up rewards which I wanted to give them - things that I felt they needed to work for. They put the effort in, but not enthusiastically and I still found myself reminding them to do the chores as well as logging that they had done it. Then things changed this week.... DS wanted something. I suggested he add it as a reward on chore monster. As it had a price I had to re-look at the point system I was using. Back in the day of stars, it was a star a chore. That understanding has stuck with me, but I realized I couldn't stick to that as some tasks were more work than others. So I changed the system, I assigned more realistic value to the work. Secondly, I upped the value of things I REALLY needed them to do. I once read that it takes 20-something days to create a habit, so I am willing to reward things to get it to habit status. And what an amazing week I had! DS was doing chores ALL day trying to earn points. I didn't have to ask, I certainly didn't have to remind him to log it and best of all he was doing tasks that wasn't on his list ;-)