Token System

I have been struggling to get my boys to listen lately. There had been lot of yelling and screaming which I had to take blame for and I just would break down and cry because I didn't know how to make them listen. I had tried everything I could think of. Nothing seemed to be working. I remembered when I was little my parents gave each of us kids little jars and if we did something nice or good or if we were just behaving well we would get poker chips. I don't remember exactly what we did with those poker chips. I think that each of them were worth a certain amount of money or something. So I decided to try it with my kids. I went to Hobby Lobby and bought these cute little glass jars and some precut wood chips. I brought them home and painted them and mod podged them with pirate paper. The boys now know if they are good then they get tokens and when they act poorly they get them taken away. When they fill their jar with the tokens then they earn a dollar. They can save that dollar or they can go to the dollar store and get something. Aidan and Ethan have really been wanting the Bone Knapper from How to Train Your Dragon, so that's what they are working together to get. This has helped me to not scream or yell because it gives them incentive to be nice or do nice things as where before they didn't have a reason to want to listen. They also start to understand the value of money which I think can be taught at a very young age. So far this has worked really well!