Trying Something New

What's pictured here is not a new decoration for our house (although that would be something new if we actually tried decorating our house, but that's a whole other post). It's actually a tool to help Joshua visualize when he makes good choices and poor choices. Reality is Joshua's been a royal pain since he turned 4 and Matthew arrived 10 months ago. He doesn't listen, he doesn't cooperate and our usual forms of discipline aren't as affective as they once were. Over the looooong winter days when we've been stuck inside I've noticed that I am tending to focus more on the negative behaviors instead of encouraging the positives which isn't helping a thing. After racking my brain I figured that maybe if he could visualize making good and bad choices that it would help him make better choices and help me focus on both the positives and negatives of his behavior. So I pulled out an old vase and bought him some colored stones and now every time he makes a good choice or does something positive he gets to put a stone in the vase, but every time he makes a poor choice with his words or behavior a stone will be taken out. The plan is to count the stones daily just to see how he's done for the day and at the end of the week we will count them to see if he has made enough good choices to earn a treat (amount of stones needed and treats to be earned are yet to be determined). Joshua is excited to try this so hopefully we will begin to see some improvements in his behavior. Give me a classroom full of 20 preschoolers any day and it would be a breeze compared to dealing with my own kids 24/7!