Ethan and Emmett fight constantly. It is annoying. Yes, I know all kids fight. In fact, every time I bring up this issue, some well-intentioned person tells me to just ignore it or to let them fight it out. The problem with this concept is that eventually one (or usually both) of them get hurt, then they come screaming and crying to me like a bone is sticking out or the world has ended. Of course, they only have one of those kind of fights when I am on the phone with someone important.
So the question is how to minimize the all out knock down, drag out fights? Perhaps just let them really injure themselves and bleed to death? Okay, so sometimes I daydream that they are in the backyard fighting it out and Ethan is screaming like someone is hacking him to death with a machete and the neighbors call the police. This has not happened YET but I swear that most of my parenting is reminding the kids why they can't do things (and it has little to do with them growing up to be well-rounded adults). For example, they can't: beat each other and scream about it (the police will come), why they can't swear in public (people will think I am a bad mom), why they can't go naked out front (again, the police will come), why they can't eat nothing but junk food (they will get fat and the doctors will blame me). Do you see the direction I am going in?
So back to the original question on how to control or minimize some of these behaviors (don't worry more blogs to come on the other problems I have parenting). Recently a child psychologist (another story - in time) told me to focus on POSITIVE reinforcement instead of PUNISHMENT. I thought I was doing that with reward charts (thanks Supernanny) and sticker charts, but apparently those rewards aren't immediate or tangible enough, so now we have behavior chips.
Really poker chips renamed, we are supposed to carry them around and focus on good behavior by presenting them with a chip that can then be exchanged for a reward. We went and got these cool clear acrylic containers and let the kids decorate them; we displayed them in a prominent spot so the kids could see the rewards adding up. We even set up some prize baskets and life was good. Sounds good right? Like something out of Amazing Parenting 101 - except I never seem to have a chip when I need it, hate carrying them around and having them randomly all over my house. Which means that we use them intermittently so they aren't very effective.
We could go back to using these things on a regular basis (which seem to shape the kids behavior well), but NO I decided to come up with a hybrid of this plan this morning - more than likely to avoid working on my Fall syllabi - now the new plan is a checklist of sorts. Each day is broken down into 5- two hour periods and I track five of their problem behaviors: hitting, screaming, not listening to me, making messes, and eating in places other than the dining room. I simply put an X in the box if they did one of those things and they don't get a chip for that two hour window. If they were good, they get a chip. This way at the end of the day I just tally it all up and pay them for their behavior (don't worry it takes 10 chips to equal a behavior buck, and most prizes are five behavior bucks and up).
It seems to be working so far, but Ethan is too smart for me. He came to my at 12:50 with 10 minutes left on the two hour window and told me that since he had already hit Emmett, he had lost his behavior chip for that time period. Therefore, he could now hit Emmett AS MUCH AS HE WANTED UNTIL 1:00! I was stunned for a minute and didn't know how to react - he had me on that one. Then, I told him if you hit your brother there is still PUNISHMENT - hahahaha. Mom got the last laugh, and I don't think the child psychologist won this round.
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