Reward charts

[jennyh]

So the time has come to try and instil a little consequence into my 3yr old and I am keen to try a reward chart but have no idea on how to make them effective. She is not strictly 3 (birthday on the 21st) but she had been going through the 'terrible twos' for what feels like forever. She is actually easy to reason with some of the time and have got through so far with a mix of bribes, threats and compromises. The issue we have now is I have realised that she has no consequences as I rarely see anything through and she finds it funny when I try to discipline her and its getting to the point with a new baby too that arguing about putting clothes on for 3 hours is not ok and that taking hours to nibble at her food only to proclaim she is 'really hungry' later is also not cool.

So I'm looking for ways to encourage her in general day to day tasks like teeth brushing, getting dressed, eating lunch nicely, listening well and then also looking for ways to make her realise it is not ok to hit, push, snatch etc which she does with gusto when she sees her friends. I know this is all general parenting stuff and on the whole I try to approach it calmly but with a newborn as well I am struggling to keep my cool and often feel it escalates easily and she learns nothing and I say mean things!

I was thinking maybe getting a chart that gives smiley stickers for everything done well and sad stickers when not so good, at the end of the day there is a small treat or a happy sticker and at the end of the week there is a little present or something? But then do you take things away if there is hitting etc and I don't want her to develop the idea that you get given things all the time...she already thinks she can have whatever she wants as the combination of Xmas and new baby has resulted in a tonne of new stuff.

I'm asking for advice from wise parents with experience of getting through these difficult stages mainly because I know I have a tendency to give her mixed messages and don't want to start something and not see it through properly. Not fair on her to confuse her and I need a consistent approach to try and improve things and have her realise that she must listen to us and to grown ups. (Incidentally she goes to nursery and has a huge amount of respect as you can imagine! ;)

[SE22mum]

if you mean that she is really good at nursery, then it could be that she is letting off steam when she is at home - as is pretty normal. both of mine are v v v good at school/nursery but very different at home.

from my experience, i would resist doing too many rewards for too many daily tasks as it can all get a bit complicated. i would also not try and tackle everything at once but focus on one priority. say, really get into the teeth bruising habit, then move on to something else.

i would suggest choosing your battles wisely, and see if you can hand over any responsibility to her. does it really matter if she takes ages to put her clothes on as long as she gets to nursery on time? maybe she takes ages because she knows there is ages? there was a stage when my little one would insist on only putting on her clothes once we were outside the front door! also with the food issue, why not set her up a little buffet and let her pick and eat as she chooses over the evening. maybe she is wanting to assert some independence?

i wouldn't worry too much at this stage about setting into good behaviour patterns, i.e. eating all your tea nicely etc because these will come. personally i think it is far more important to establish family dynamics and not getting too stressed about toddler behaviour if you also have a small baby to deal with!!! rather than stressing about everything and making wild threats you don't follow through and then getting angry with yourself, i would try and cultivate patience (not easy!) and pick one or two really non-negotiables to tackle. in our house the first was doing teeth properly, wearing enough warm clothes to go outside, and a weekly hair wash. for these, threats were carried through to the bitter end...and once they became a habit we could move on to something else.

this is just one approach though. you have to choose something that suits your personality as a mother. good luck!

[jennyh]

Thank you! That's really helpful and all opinions are useful. I think my desire to try and crack things is that it feels like its making life much harder having to dither so much and having her so whingy because she's hungry etc. I take on board he point about picking battles and I do tend to, I think I do need to work out the priorities and will give it a lot more thought to work out the best approach. The hitting etc is prob the most urgent as that stresses me the most and stops me wanting to go out when I really need to get out for my sanity!!

She recently slept really well one night and I gave her a little treat and she kept going on and on about it and was really proud of herself so I think I am going to ride on the back of that and try to judge which things warrant a fuss and which to let go.

[nunheadmum]

I find that reward charts are good for specific problems e.g. eating all your dinner or not getting our of bed. If it's for more general behaviour things then we use a jar of pebbles / beads and then you can give one for any good thing they do or take away if they do something bad. A full jar gets a reward. It depends on whether you think she'll understand at her age.

Our nursery used to use the 'sad face' for poor behaviour and we adopted that at home too for a bit - if they do something naughty, they have to sit on the sad face as they've made mummy sad by not behaving well. That worked far better for my youngest than stickers - she really hated thinking she'd upset me.