Reward Chart for 2yo. Ideas please...

[Thevirginmummy1]

I'm wanting to start some kind of reward system for my 27 month old. He's generally pretty well behaved and we make sure we praise him when he's playing nicely/ helping etc. The naughty corner is fairly well established but I want to reward the good behaviour too, especially since he now has a new baby sister taking some of the attention. Any ideas for things to capture his attention and make sense to him and any ideas for rewards please?

We had one where he got a sticker for going to the toilet and then get enough stickers and he'd get a cat. The truth is we were going to get a cat anyway, but he wasn't to know that and it was definitely effective.

Obviously, you might not be planning on getting a cat, but maybe something that you would be doing anyway but make him think he's earned it over time. A holiday? Theme park? Decorate his bedroom with a theme?

I based mine around magazines because every time we were in a shop DS wanted a magazine. So I gave out "stars" (which I didn't record anywhere, just verbally) and when he had five he could buy a magazine. I tried to work it so he got five about once every 1-2 weeks.

I would be careful about relying too heavily on rewards for every little thing because they tend to get reliant on them and then everything becomes about the reward rather than them just doing it because they wanted to, that's why I went for something more long winded.

For my 2 year old just getting a sticker (thomas the tank engine) was enough. Although to be fair after one week he didn't want the sticker but still did what we wanted him to do (sleep in his bed not ours!)

Can he chose dinner? Or lunch? Or where you go out?

I did that recently with my DS1. I didn't know what to do that day so told him he'd been a good boy (true) and he could choose where we went. He chose to go back to a really good park we'd found earlier that week. Nice and easy for us and he was so chuffed to have chosen our day out!

Does he like the baby? When DS2 was born, a real treat for DS1 was to be allowed to cuddle him (DS1 lay on his back and I put DS2 on his tummy). So I said if he stopped trying to clmib on us whilst DS2 fed, he could have a cuddle afterwards. And of course got loads of praise about what a nice brother he was.

In fact, thinking about it, DS1 is quite easy to "treat". Eg. he loves having his baby brother in his bath so I sometimes "allow" it or he loves having him in his bed so I let DS2 lie next to him whilst I'm reading the bedtime story.

Actually, back to the stickers, I found that after a week of DS1 earning his stickers for sleeping in his bed, we pulled a big surprise present out (leftover from Christmas!) and that made more of an impression on his behaviour than the stickers did. So although it was only a one-off reward, he kept up with the good behaviour IYSWIM

And in truth it was more about stopping him whining for magazines all the time than the reward itself, though it did come in useful! I used to give him a star for things like carrying a bag home from the supermarket for me, tidying up without being asked, trying something which was scary or a big effort for him, and sometimes I thought oh, it would be helpful if he did X and offered him a star for doing it.

We transitioned from stars to Euros when we moved to Germany and couldn't find magazines in English and over time sort of got out of the habit of doing it but it worked very well at the time.

The other time we did a big reward was for getting over a fear, took us a really long time to get him to have his hair washed without a fuss, but a big chocolate egg combined with a 5-step plan proved to be a brilliant motivator, and now he washes his hair all by himself!

And we do sort of general, DS, we've been so pleased with your behaviour today, for a special treat you can (insert fun thing here). That seems to go down well as a general thing rather than saying that he got a sticker for X, one for Y, two for Z, etc.