Jennifer bought Janelle a little Chore Chart, where she has tasks to perform every day. If she completes the task, she gets a star for that task for the day. It's all age appropriate stuff, like go to bed and stay in bed, get dressed, pick up your mess, things like that. If she accumulates a certain number of stars each week - a number we set to keep it realistically achievable - she gets a reward. The first week, it was lunch out with Daddy. Last week, it was a sleepover with Aunt Kellie in her hotel room.
She has one of these clocks that tells her when its OK to get up. That's how she's judged on the go to bed and stay in bed metric. She has to be quiet and let Mommy sleep until the clock turns green to get that star.
This morning, she was up before I left (~6:15). I saw her bedside light on and went in to check on her. She was partly awake, so I gave her a hug and kiss and told her to go back asleep. After I went downstairs to get ready to leave, I heard footsteps upstairs. I looked up and saw the bathroom light on. I went up and she was already done in the bathroom and back in her room. I peeked in and she was sitting on the bed looking at her Cinderella book. I gave her another hug and kiss and headed to work, thinking Jeni was getting an early wake-up.
Tonight, I asked Jeni what time Janelle got up. She said Janelle came in our room at 7:30, and said, "Mommy, my clocks green and I'm dressed!" I guess she responds well to positive reinforcement. She'd waited patiently for over an hour and managed her time and activities to get dressed while she was waiting. I'm really proud that she's "getting it".
No comments:
Post a Comment