$60 per week?! That seems an awful lot. What does he have to buy with this money? Does he buy his own clothes, pay his entertainment and canteen lunches etc? My niece is 14, she gets $12.50 per week!
My 12 year old gas the capacity to earn $40 a fortnight, for 6 hours work a fortnight. This is above normal part of house hold, her room being clean, bed made and towell hung up is normal house hold stuff.
To earn her money she has to do an hour on monday and Tuesday and 2 on the Saturday she is at home with us. In that time she is responsible for washing her and her siblings clothes, including hanging out, folding and putting away. Main bathroom and toilet cleaning, washing the towels from main bathroom and changing bedding ones a month, I do the other bed changes during the month.
She loses money from what she earns for leaving wet towels in her room. So if she does everything and also leaves towels in her room she won't get the full amount.
In terms of behaviour if she mucho up she loses privileges eg, iPod, tv watching, electronics etc.
What LS said. He's part of the household, he pulls his weight or he can live elsewhere. Why should he? Because it's part of being a civilised human being. It's not fair? BS. It's totally fair. It's not fair that people should run around after him when he's perfectly able to use his hands, feet, head. He's 14. In many communities, he'd be out earning a living by now.
tell him to stop being a bloody princess and act his age.
Thanks everyone, ths is exactly what I was thinking. I'm going to show it to DH and tell him we are sending the wrong message. Paying him for stuff that is part of living in a household is not on.
We are going to have to sit down & rethink everything. Thank you so much for your input
We tried a similar system with our DD (although lesser amounts) around a similar age. The problem was, the reward/consequence was too abstract. The money is completely imaginary until they get it, and the time between when they leave the towel on the floor and feel the sting of the missing $$ is too long to really make the connection. We found that even when she got not pocket money at all, it didn't really make any change.
So we've separated chores and pocket money. She gets pocket money now but it is not tied to doing chores, and she's expected to supply her own toiletries etc, as well as funding her own (limited) social life. So she's learning about how to make her money last for what she needs. Re the chores, we thought up some more immediate consequences. Removal of devices is one that works very well here. They can be confiscated at short notice, and if the behaviour does not improve, further devices are removed. She's got down to none and having to do her homework in the library at lunchtime (without her laptop) and I can tell you there was a very sudden and steep improvement in her chore-doing around that time!!
Another thing that works (and I have done this) is to make them "practice" the chore (like, on a Saturday morning). For example, you could send him into the bathroom to practice hanging up the towels for 5 minutes. As if they clearly have some difficulty with it so they need to practice in their spare time until it gets easier . Ok so I wouldn't overuse this one but it does make a point. Alternatively, you could have him write down a list of all the chores you do in a day on one side of a piece of paper, to compare with his own (very short) list.
FWIW I think $60 is far too much pocket money for someone who already has an over-inflated sense of entitlement. Pocket money is something you get when you demonstrate that you are a responsible person IMO, it's not an automatic right. I would be cutting that right back (bearing in mind what his actual need-based expenses are), with a view to reviewing amounts when the general level of helpfulness/responsibility improves.
Thanks Marydean, when you confiscate phone, laptop etc when do you return them or how often do you keep the, confiscated for?
I really appreciate all your assistance on this- its very hard to be an instant mother. The tips you have given me have given me great points to bring up in terms of house rules, respect and responsibility
Depends on the scale of the infraction. Usually, if she's getting a bit slack and not getting the jobs done daily, I confiscate her ipod (that hurts the most) and provided she starts doing the job, she'll get it back in a day or two. If she doesn't apply herself, the time lengthens. We also use this when she doesn't meet other expectations, eg we come down hard on her if she doesn't get homework finished. With her it's not usually willful disobedience, rather distraction and failure to organise herself. I'm hard on her with these things because she's so scatty and I figure I've only got a couple more years to get her into good habits, or she's not going to cope with the "real world". I also talk a lot about our expectations and how that relates to what real life requires. What we expect is often the same sorts of things that employers expect, kwim?
Registered User
. Ok so I wouldn't overuse this one but it does make a point. Alternatively, you could have him write down a list of all the chores you do in a day on one side of a piece of paper, to compare with his own (very short) list.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks