Tuesday, October 19

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Can you guess what the title spells?

Daddy’s girl is NOT the only child in our house that needs a little creative correcting.  I call them all outlaws remember?  The boys have had some issues with picking their clothes up off the floor A LOT lately.  You would think they were a bunch of silly girls considering how often they change clothes.  I was constantly tripping over dirty clothes or finding clean ones thrown out all over the place as a result of them hunting something in particular.  It was seriously on my everlasting nerve.  After yelling & threatening didn’t seem to work, I realized I needed a little creativity to solve the problem.  (*I’m still working on starting with creativity rather than resorting to it as a final attempt)

 

I wrote lines on our dry-erase board in the kitchen hang-man style & told the boys that every time I saw their clothes picked up I would add a letter to spell:

 1010 073

And as soon as they spelled it they would get their choice of ice-cream:  root-beer float, sunday, banana split, whatever!  Guess what?  It worked!!  Every day for 8 days they kept their clothes picked up without me even having to remind them.  They didn’t miss one day.  I’m hoping now they have formed the habit of picking their clothes up, but we may have to do it again one more time :)

*I had the same issue with Taylor (& still do sometimes), but I used Lisa Whelchel’s idea from her book – every time I walked into her room & found clothes on the floor I got to pick her outfit for the next day.  And it wasn’t always super fashionable.  :)  Other idea’s include making a reward chart & once they meet their goal buy them a new outfit (girls LOVE this one!!!) or get a trash bag & confiscate any clothes on the floor – making them either earn it back (ie. by not leaving clothes in the floor for a set amount of time) or by giving it away.  Let me tell you, had I of been able to do this it probably would have only taken once, but Taylor being the only girl, I just couldn’t part with some of her outfits & it would be my luck that she would leave one of my favorites in the floor.  

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