The Chore Chart

I never thought I'd be assigning my 3-year old "chores" to do! For the past week or so, I've been coming into work late and explaining that it was because Parker wouldn't get dressed This gave my one of my friends at work the opportunity to tell me that her 9-year old son still doesn't want to wear jeans and that she had similar experiences with him as a toddler with getting dressed and ready for the day. She told me that she uses chore charts with both of her kids to get them to do simple things around the house and for themselves. I decided to try this, so I created my own chore chart for Parker and we started it on Sunday, telling Parker that his reward for doing all of his "chores" for the week would be go to Chuck E Cheese on Saturday! I know what you're thinking....and Brandon said the same thing, "But, we can't go to Chuck E Cheese every weekend!" For the first week, we're starting out big and the rewards will get smaller as the weeks go on, but I wanted Parker to be "reawlly, reawlly" excited about this one!

Parker has been "reawlly, reawlly" excited about it and everytime he does something on his "chore chart" he draws a "P" or a "1" or a "O" on it. He reminds me that he has to put this on his chart and then he also says something about going to Chuck E Cheese!

Today was the first day in about two weeks that we haven't seen tears in the morning! I told him it was time to get dressed, I brought out what he wanted to wear and at first I was worried that we were going to have a meltdown...Parker said, "I'm not ready to get dressed." After looking at his cartoon and then looking at me again, he said, "Okay, now I'll get dressed." It's like he remembered that it was one of his chores!

We've changed two things about our lives in the past few days...we added the chore chart and we now go to bed earlier (for all of us!) and I think they are working! No tears = happy family! Now...if only I could get away with creating a chore chart for Brandon!