My Little Star

[Clover]

We've had terrible trouble getting our toddler (2 1/2) to stay in his own bed since he moved out of his cot in March. He's been coming into our bed in the middle of the night or very early morning and not going back to sleep. On Friday, totally exhausted and just fed up of the whole thing, we decided we had to do something and opted for a sticker chart. Since then he has started to stay in his own bed (he is collecting stickers towards a Tellietubbie CD-Rom) and has even astonished us by lying in until 7am (we are more used to 5.30am). Obviously we want this to continue but how do you move on once all the stickers needed to get his prize have been awarded? Do you start another sticker chart? Where does the whole process end?

If I was in your position I would make a huge fuss about how good he is being and hopefully he will think that it is worthwhile enough not to need bribing any more. Don't mention the stars again unless he does once he has achieved this reward. If he does start playing up again then you might have to think of something new but this could be something that you would be doing anyway and doesn't have to be a major purchase. Hopefully praising good behaviour will be sufficient and he might actually feel better himself for his good sleeping habits.

Yes, it's lucky your son is too young to know the value of money. Just make the next present cheaper.

If your sticker chart gets you a full nights sleep, you're onto a winner IMO. Why look a gift horse in the mouth If you have to do it again, it's really no big deal, and if you keep the praise high and the reward small, it's less of a blatent bribe.

Where does it end? well, I only recently introducted a reward/sticker system for my 8 year old. It seems to work with him. Someone else posted that stickers still work with some 15 year olds, so there are many years of stickers ahead of us, I suppose.

We used a sticker chart when potty training DS1. He eventually stopped asking for stickers as he got the hang of potty training so we quietly got rid of the chart. I'm thinking of reinstating it for eating vegetables

He had to collect 30 stickers for a reward and these varied in size but were generally fairly cheap.

I agree that if it works well & gets you a lie in, keep going! Most little children will be satisfied with any reward at the end, they don't understand the cost.

We've used sticker/reward charts with our son since he was just over 2 for all sorts of things - sleeping through the night, not making a fuss when getting dressed (was a nightmare for about two weeks) etc and we've had a lot of success with them. At first stickers used to add up to a present for a full chart, but since we were designing the blank sticker charts on the pc ourselves I just kept adding more boxes to fill up a line (cruel or what eh??).
Now the stickers in their own right seem to be enough of an incentive and we have forgotton about redeeming 'full sheets'. However we make a BIG thing about displaying them on the wall in his playroom and he even shows them to our friends sometimes and says proudly "I've been a good boy!"
Good luck!

If bribery works go for it. It doesn't work with every child. I made a fortune in high school out of my brother's inability to be bribed. My parents tried to get him to get good grades at school and offered larger and larger amounts of money for good grades. In order to be fair they had to offer the same to me. I loved school and got straight A's without trying. My brother's grades never did improve as he just didn't like school.

Thanks for all your comments, girls,
The sticker chart NO 2 continues to work its magic and DS hasn't noticed he's got to collect more stickers for Prize No 2. I don't think he's too worried what it is going to be either. We've gone from very disrupted nights and early mornings to sleeping through in just over a week. I'm a sticker chart convert for sure!