I thought he was a little older than Em. Does it work for your brother? I wonder when that switch from taking away _____ to earning _______ works best?

I've somehow managed to teach Liv to say, "Peeeeew!" when she has a dirty diaper. She came lumbering towards me with outstreached hands saying, "PEEEEWWWWW!" Um, hand, covered in shit from a diaper blow out.

I tossed her immediately into the tub. Man, I need a shot of tequila.

Em's in the tub. She just announced she was done.

ION, we bought this today to play with. I think it's as close to sushi as I'm likely to get in a while. *sob*

Fun!

Why no sushi? No access or are you preggers?

Bite your tongue, Missy!

Up here they call it, "bait."

no idea why it is common for them.

he stopped, he apologized. we have bathed and read a story and he is now hopefully quickly falling asleep.

(OK, so she's not my agent, but she gets to be our communal agent, right?) She was telling me over the summer she wanted them to do a book!

It's been on gawker for the last couple of days.

It seems to work pretty well. He's a pretty high energy kid but isn't so much a troublemaker. Well, except when in cahoots with his parents...

They use a stoplight model borrowed from the preschool. Basically, if he has a "green" day, he gets a star or whatever that counts towards some highly desired/obsessed over goal. He doesn't have to be an angel all day or anything. He can go from a red in the morning (he starts each day with a blank slate) back to green by the end. He just gets warned "you are turning yellow, D. " So it is sort of negative consequence, but over a longer term.

He does still get an immediate consequence. But this can shut down a ramp up where the threat of an immediate negative consequence really doesn't so well. I guess the long term consequences matter more to him than the prospect of getting sent to his room or losing an activity right then.

I see how it could go wrong (associating good behavior with a treat all the time, rather than that old "good behaviour is its own reward" thing) but it seems to work for this kid's personality. I think it really depends on the kid.

I think my parents used something similar with me, but I'm not sure. I remember putting gold stars on a calendar. Wouldn't surprise me. I don't ever recall being terribly impressed with the threat of being sent to my room, grounded or whatever.

Sara, we did something similar with CJ when he was in 1st grade. His teacher would send home a weekly summary, each day either had a smiley face, a straight face, or a frowny face. We had treats for 3 smiley's, 4 smiley's, and 5 smiley's. They were very minor treats, but it helped. Yes, good behavior should be its own reward, but really - in real life, when you behave well, there are more apt to be treats than not, right?