Dear Parent, bear in mind that ordering, asking in a grave voice, bribing and blackmail, on the subject of household duties, simply does not work today. If by chance it works, it will only for a short time and leave behind a ruin in the form of a broken psyche, fear and shaken relations between parents and children. This is unfortunately painful truth.
In recent times, the slogans have become very fashionable: stress-free upbringing of children, upbringing without penalties and prizes, parenting of values. Facebook is full of very nice memes that promote the above values. Only how to translate it into everyday life? Jak zrealizować, te szczytne założenia, w realnym a nie facebookowym życiu i nie skończyć w domu wariatów mając wrażenie, że jest się tam na urlopie – bo jest spokojniej 🙂 ?
The mechanism of the prize
The reliable, American scientists come to our aid. Following their example, we decided to use the mechanism of creating habits, which is discussed in more detail you can read here, and specifically the mechanism of reward and habit creation. Scientists, studying the rules of habit formation, by the way, they discovered the mechanism of rewarding in the human brain.
It turns out that our brains they respond perfectly to rewards. Even the tiniest. For example, if we want to start run in the morning, strong will is not enough. What is needed is a reward mechanism that will motivate us to act.
By the way, strong will is overrated. Unfortunately, we wake up every morning a very small resource of strong will. Every decision we make causes a strong will to decline. And so after taking about 10 any decisions, the strong will irretrievably disappears that day, and excuses appearwhy we did not do something.
Personal development coaches have been encouraging for years to start a day without smartphones, radio or television. Why? Because every micro decision, for example: what to read in socialmedia, which post to polajkować, and even what radio station to listen, causes exhaustion of resources of our strong will. Here is the recipe for an optimal start to the day, according to specialists in personal development:
- first, something for the body - breakfast, exercise
- second, something for the soul - prayer, meditation
- thirdly, something for work - the three most important things of the day
- then the rest - replying to emails, browsing socialmedia, reading the most important news from news portals, etc.
Thanks to this approach, always we will have enough strength to take action in the most important areas of our lives. And if we do not have strong will for other things, it's hard, nothing terrible will happen.
Returning to the mechanism of rewarding in the human brain. Wanting to form a habit, everyday running, as we mentioned, a reward is needed. The researchers carried out the experiment. It consisted in rewarding the micro habits that make up a specific action. The first micro-habit, the future runner, should be putting on running shoes. So the prize for putting on shoes was a small tasty energy bar, which, importantly, lay next to the shoes. For each run or marched distance, the runner received the next micro awards, eg: appropriate status in social media + likes, favorite drink or a piece of your favorite pizza. Each time, after receiving the micro reward, an increased level of dopamine in the runner's body was observed.
Dopamine, commonly called the "happiness hormone", is a neurotransmitter produced and released by nerve cells found in the brain and spinal cord. Dopamine interacting with on the limbic system, controls mental and emotional processes, improves the mood, gives energy to action, supports concentration, increases motivation to repeat specific behavior and causes a feeling of euphoria. Interestingly, if we want to maintain a high level of dopamine in the brain, we should limit the amount of coffee consumed. Unfortunately, caffeine after a temporary stimulation of neurotransmitters in the brain, reduces the amount of dopamine.
After 30 days of running the experiment, rewards were started. However, it turned out that the brain was still there he produced dopamine after doing activities that were previously rewarded. Conclusion: the brain began to reward itself after performing a specific activity, so a positive habit emerged.
This is the mechanism that we decided to use when introducing home duties.
"Smiley" system
We started introducing household duties about 4 years ago. These were times when today's fashionable ideas were not so fashionable and unknown to us at all. We started classically. From the system of penalties and prizes. We printed an A3 card with five things to which we wanted to draw our kids' attention. It was a list adapted to their age, which is a list of challenges for 4-year-olds and 6-year-old:
- brushing teeth in the morning
- order in the room
- nicely eaten dinner
- behavior on a walk
- brushing teeth in the evening
The first column was our expectations on the other days of the week. There were faces in empty boxes: smiling (if it was ok), neutral (if it was something not quite right), sad (if it was wrong).
Kratkę zalaminowaliśmy w punkcie ksero. Dzięki temu mogliśmy pisać po niej pisakami i nie trzeba było co tydzień drukować nowej kartki. To było bardzo praktyczne rozwiązanie. Nie mieliśmy szansy na usprawiedliwienia, że nie wydrukowaliśmy kartki, więc w tym tygodniu nie będziemy robić ocen 😉 .
We placed the card on the kitchen wall. We called the kids and nanny and explained that from tomorrow we will start a game in which you will be able to get face for different behaviors that are on the page. Of course, the "smileys" could be inserted by nanny and parents.
The kids got involved in the game right away. For the first weeks, everything worked just as we planned. The kids competed with each other, who would have more faces smiling. At the beginning, the system did not require any awards. Smiley faces were enough. After a few weeks, neutral and sad faces began to appear. The kids noticed that whether they are smiling or neutral does not matter, so why try? Well, we introduced prizes: if the whole week was "smiling", the children received the prize in the form of a special dessert on Sundays. It worked, but again after a dozen or so weeks, it stopped working. After half a year, the game turned out to be ineffective. Where did we make a mistake?
The first mistake on our part it was to judge children by giving them faces. Instead of building in them the need to brush their teeth, order in peace or eat dinner, we wanted to judge them as employees in a corporation - we set them KPI (Key Performance Indicators) and we evaluated their implementation on a daily basis.
The second mistake it was a belief that a game is enough to make children realize what we wanted. However, these were our goals and not theirs. And the system of penalties and prizes did not work at all, because clever kids, after initial fascination, always found a way to "ignore" the system or ignore it.
Effect: the game taught the children that they are rated and they have to earn our satisfaction. Unfortunately, at this age, children do not distinguish between the satisfaction of parents and their love (which should be unconditional always and everywhere). It led to the fear that mom and dad will not be happy, so they will not love us, and yet the reluctance to realize their unimaginable goals and so won.
Search
We began to suspect that we are doing something wrong. We started to look for information on how to motivate children more effectively in everyday life. And so we hit the system of habits and rewards, which in total is not a reward.
If you want, you can earn ... zloty
Gdy dzieci miały 7 i 9 lat wprowadziliśmy kieszonkowe. Zasady kieszonkowego były proste: kieszonkowe jest co tydzień i wynosi 5 zł (dzisiaj kieszonkowe to 10 zł – im większe dzieci tym większe potrzeby 😉 ). Do tego dodaliśmy zasadę zbierania na a specific goal. We asked the kids to find something that they would love to have, for example, a mug with a Minecraft print, a unicorn mascot, etc. that is within a 20 or 40 PLN monthly budget.
Then, we printed and hung on the wall in the kids' room. It was their goal to collect. Under the dreamed thing, we were doing "progress bar", that is, four empty rectangles, which after collecting 5 or 10 zlotys were painted over - it was to visualize how much was still to achieve the goal.
Zbiórka na cel udawała się średnio co drugi raz, ponieważ kieszonkowe rozchodziło się na bieżące przyjemności 🙂 np. słodycze.
To streamline goal collections, we've added an additional option - you can earn a zloty. We valued all things that could be done by 7 and 9 years old in our home. Each job was worth exactly 1 PLN. The list of collected items - home duties - we hung on the refrigerator. The list was the same, despite the age difference, both for a 7 year old and a 9 year old. For Ewa, we also drew pictograms to make it easier to see what she can do. And so began the stage of earning. An exemplary list of house chores at the 7-9 year stage:
- cleaning the cat litter box
- bringing the dog out in the morning
- bringing the dog out in the evening
- loading the dishwasher
- unloading the dishwasher
- ironing shirts
- loading the washing machine
- unloading the washing machine
- putting together washed out things
- preparation of supper
The system worked perfectly. If you missed a few "dreams" to realize your dreams - the kids knew what to do. Taught by the previous experience of the "smiley" system, this time we built a need in children in the form of their own purpose. It was a simple rule that their dreams have no limits. We wanted to give them the confidence that they can pursue their dreams faster or slower, but the pace depends on them. In this way, we completely eliminated the system of penalties and prizes awarded by us.
Modification of the zloty system
After about a year, since the introduction of the zloty system, we have introduced a certain modification. According to the researchers' assumptions - a positive habit resulting from work and reward has already been created, so we decided to part of the duties that were previously priced move to household duties, made free as a contribution to "our common home".
As always, we made a family meeting in the kitchen. We showed the kids our list of tasks that we do for our home. So there is an example that even parents, devote part of their time to make the house clean, the fridge full and the laundry washed and ironed.
To slightly sweeten, the passage of some activity from the zloty system, for household duties, i.e. for free, we did: a can of nuts. For each house duty done, we threw the nut into a can. As the can was full (on average once every two months of daily duties), we did some family fun, for example: going out to the ice cream at your favorite cafe.
The modification was accepted without problems. And it works effectively today.
Raising without penalties and prizes
Introducing the possibility of earning a zloty resulted in the creation of positive habits, which after a while began to reward themselves. How is it to raise without penalties and prizes? It seems that it fulfills the assumptions of this educational model. Despite the appearance of the "reward" mechanism. A very important element distinguishing from rewarding by parents for fulfilling parents' goals, there is an inner need of a child, the attainment of one's own goal and the free will of the child at the pace of its implementation.
Free will, allows the child to choose: I will either do something or I will not do it. Regardless of the child's choice, the relationship with parents is safe - because it is not subject to parental assessment, and the child is not afraid that he will lose the acceptance or love of his parents, because he did not clean the room or did not unpack the dishwasher. The consequence of not doing something is only postponing the time the child's goal is achieved.
Our children are currently happy they perform house dutiese. Though they sometimes need it reminders, że trzeba je wykonać 😉 . They also have the right to refuse their performanceand we, as parents, respect. Remember that children are small adults. We also give ourselves the right not to do something at a given moment and postpone things for later - when we have more time or energy. We can not deny this right to children, just because we have power over them and we can simply force them to something.
Reproducing habits - how to earn a dog
At the beginning of April, Ewa and Tymek came to us with the idea of buying a dream dog. Our dog's dream is our children's dream shiba inu from Japan. Because we already have one dog, we know that children can take care of him and realize the amount of responsibilities resulting from having a pooch. However, the cost of shiba buying has been hindered. Because, it is a purebred dog, fashionable and there are few breeding of this breed in Poland, the price of a puppy varies between 3000 and 5000 PLN. Space amount.
However, after obtaining our consent to purchase, the kids themselves came up with the initiative of "earning a doggy". On Sunday afternoon, they made a piggy bank and a 7-point plan to make money for their dream shiba inu.
First, they collected all their fines, miscalculated and recorded on a piece of paper in a piggy bank:
"7 April 2019: PLN 11.26". It was their starting amount.
prepared 
We sell 
Success
Goal: within 2 years to collect / earn at Shiba Inu minimum PLN 3000.
Below is a plan to earn such a "cosmic" amount:
- a family auction of paintings by Ewa
- help my grandfather sell sauerkraut on the market
- sticking stickers on containers for pickled cabbage
- sale of hand-made Easter palms on the market
- sale of hand-made easter bunnies on the market and on the Internet
- sales of Easter eggs decorated with silicone or wax on the market
- during every birthday sale among the family of self-baked croissants
Effect? After 10 days, on April 17, the kids had 400 zlotys of money and a great sense of pride that they had completed part of their plan.
Wygląda na to, że nawyk realizacji własnych marzeń, zaczął działać na pełnym automacie 🙂 .
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