How Touching

This post goes into the category of items that I've been meaning to blog about but keep putting it off. But, its back to regular life of work and school tomorrow so there is no time like the present.

Don't look away from that scary photo. Connor, Bob and I had to to look at it for two months. It was created for a specific purpose--to track Connor's behavior in a grand endeavor to earn himself an iPod Touch. He'd been asking for one since late summer.

The concept was simple enough. Earn enough good behavior points to deserve it. The tracking was simple, too. Even if it looks awful. Every day he could earn a possible total of 13 points. He had a morning section, a school section, and a night time section. He did really well on his mornings and pretty well a school. We probably gave him too many freebies on the nighttime stuff such as "no whining about homework" or "picking up toys". But overall, I'd have to say that it worked out pretty well. He had a time limit--he had to earn 400 points by Dec. 22 or it was a total washout. He just made it---and a bonus 10 points for a great report card helped push him over the top.

Every few days we would total what he had earned and he would color in the thermometer. You can see a point on there just above 300 where I wrote "Cheater" on there one night when he went past the line for the amount he had earned. And you can see that in the categories on the bottom I had to circle "Pick Up Toys" since that was something he really struggled with and we've had to talk about it repeatedly.

I'm working on some shorter term behavior tracking programs for the next month or so that are different, more focused, and continue to be positive. Though I think many parents are good at this intuitively, we definitely need structure around positive reinforcement around here. We need to be reminded to talk about the fantastic and just every day good stuff that our boy does vs. just freaking out over the messy, loud, bad stuff. Being positive definitely works for Connor and it definitely makes our house a happier home.

He's loving his iPod. He's got lots of SpongeBob on there, Avatar, Camp Lazlo, and few movies. He's got some great fun games, too, like JellyCar. But most of all, I think he's proud of himself--and that's what's really Touch-ing.