Reward charts

[parker1313]

How exactly do I use a reward chart?
Iv purchased early learning ones. A pirate one for da (6) and a princess one for dd (3).
In the past when uv used them I find myself always taking them away.

What sort of reward chart is it?

I have one which we have different categories on:

Toilet use

Tidying up

Being helpful

Eating meals

We award little smilie faces for good behaviour and a gold star for something extra special. When he gets 20 smilie faces and 10 gold stars we buy him a little something.

Works quite well but he is only 3.

HTH

I've been reading the book The Incredible Years and it gives a lot of advice on reward charts etc.
Basically you have to decide which behaviour you want to encourage e.g. not fighting / sharing / behaving when out / doing as asked first time etc etc. (But not too many different things) Then you have to list these things on your charts and decide the specific things they must do to get the sticker - i.e being "good" is not specific enough. "playing for half an hour without fighting" is more like it.
Then you decide with the children (if they are old enough to negotiate) what they want to work towards - small, frequent goals at the start work better - and how many stickers equal what prize.
Prizes can be non-monetary or actual physical things - an extra story at bedtime, getting to chose what the family has for desert, 15 minutes watching a DVD of their choice, a small toy, chosing where you go the next day (park/library/swimming etc)
The younger they are the more frequent the prize must be - e.g. my DD is 3 so needs the potential to earn something every day for it to have an effect, whereas an older child (Your 6 yo) may be able to see that getting 10 stickers over 3 days will get them something worthwhile.

Phew ... and then you review it ... if they aren't getting any prizes then you've set it too hard or not specific enough so you need to lighten it. And once they regularly get the prizes for the behaviour you can toughen it a bit - so more stickers are needed for the prize or a longer interval of the good behaviour before getting a sticker.

Hope this isn't too rambling - but it seems to be working for me and my stroppy DD. Good luck and I'd definately recommend that book.