day eighty-three: charts, rewards, and incomplete work

“Finally, I got to get up, and I made my bed.” from “Jonathan’s Journal”




In an earlier post, I described making charts for preschoolers’ morning routines and touched on rewards. Charts are an ideal way to introduce preschoolers to morning routines and help them learn to follow through (by “moving the game piece around the chart” or putting a sticker on the chart, etc.).


If you are just introducing morning routines to your preschooler (or even chore sessions, which I will discuss in a few days), it is a good idea to reward them for cooperation, helpfulness, joyfulness, follow-through, diligence, etc. (rewarding them for good character!).


You can do this a number of ways, depending on the ages of the child. For younger children, a daily reward, such as an extra story at story time or a miniature candy after naptime, etc might be appropriate. For older children, you can accumulate “points” or number of times that jobs are well done, such as four out of five days of morning routines completed on time without complaining yields an ice cream from McDonald’s or an extra thirty minutes playing on the computer.


However, you want to be careful that every little thing a child does is not dependent upon a reward. After the child gets accustomed to the morning routine, rewards should be omitted or given occasionally. He should do the morning routine because it is the right thing to do—and because it is what we do when we first get up in the morning. You alone can determine when this transition from “new” and “rewardable” to “normal” and “routine” takes place.


I just want to caution young parents not to make everything a rewardable scenario. Some things in life we do just because they are the right thing. Children who feel that they have to be rewarded at every turn often do not learn the joys of doing what’s right or what’s best just because it is right or best.


Tomorrow we will focus on praise—as Jonathan and Mommy “swirled and swirled.”