I Earned It Myself!

As many of you know, Teagan is our very head strong child. He is so smart and studies everything. However, he tends to get bored easily as he doesn't find things to keep him challenged or interested. We felt bad that he was always in trouble or picking on Tate.

So, when we moved here we started something new with him... A chart! Every night we go over all the things that he did good like,
*Resting,
*Helping,
*Being nice to his brother,
*Eating all of a meal (he NEVER eats - mostly because he never wants what i make because he is picky, but it drives me nuts),
*saying prayers,
*sitting on the potty (which he did for awhile but has now lost interest- - any ideas here?), etc.

After we go through each item he gets a sticker for all the ones he has done and also earns coins for each item and/or time to do what he wants to do. We were very generous with the money at first because we wanted him to understand how it works... You do something good, you get money and then you can get something. Well, this pic was taken the first day he earned enough money to go buy something.

We started off and went to Target and BigW (like our Walmart) and he of course wanted all of the toys that were $30-50. I kept telling him, you don't have enough. You'd have to save up for a loooong time to get those. It was killing my mom through this whole process. She wanted to just give him the money, but of course didn't. Normally a trip to the toy aisle would always result in a humongous fit if we left with out a toy and I would always try to avoid walking by them. It started to be that way with anything (candy, toys, movies, small rides, you name it). But now I can tell him "Yes" to everything if he has enough money. I had enormous satisfaction when I saw how quickly he changed his perspective when he was spending his own money that he worked hard to get. He wanted to get candy and when I told him he could get candy but wouldn't have enough money to buy the truck he wanted he chose not to get the candy. Then we saw a little coin ride that he could sit on for $2 (yes a total rip off) and when I told him how much money that would take away of his, he decided not to do it. I've never had one fit since he has his own money. In fact, the other day he asked if he could go to Toys R Us and just LOOK at the toys. He said he didn't want to buy any, just look. Since it was on the way to where we needed to go, we stopped. And he didn't throw a fit when we left empty handed. And of top of it, he has even tried to buy toys now and still have money left over.

The satisfaction this little kid had when he bought these trucks was amazing! All day long he kept saying, "I EARNED it myself!"

The next Family Home Evening we had was about tithing. He had no clue what we were saying but when I asked him for his money to give to the Lord, he handed it right over. He was so proud and so were we. You are growing up little T-man!