Help me come up with a chore/reward system for my kids?

Question

I have three boys, ages 9, 6 and 3. They all share a room and it is a fairly large room. The younger one frequently trashes the room but doesn't really help clean yet-he just turned 3 a month ago.

The older two love video games and I want to come up with some way where they get rewarded game time for cleaning their room. My first thought was an hour game time for an hour cleaning but they can drag an hour's cleaning time into 3 days so that won't work. I don't want to say they can't play unless the room is clean, as the younger child makes that nearly impossible-I know, I clean the rest of the house up after him and I'd never do anything if I said I could only have free time if the house was clean! LOL

So, please give me *good* ideas on how to incorporate cleaning into "game time" for the older two. They already have bins for types of toys, organization to make it easy, unused toys are gone, etc.

Answer 1

try the bead system! that is what my family and i do; you have a bead jar for every kid in the family, and every couple of toys they pick up (it will be up to you to decide how many, and it depends on the ammount of toys in the room) they get one bead in their jar. Then, when they want to play video games, they can bring their bead jar to you, and trade in beads, for time playing their video games.  Or, you can do a mommy or daddy store, every once in a while, you surprise them and open the store, and they can trade in beads for toys and games and such.

For the mommy or daddy store, you can buy whatever you want to put in it. I have found that this system works well! And not only can you give them beads for cleaning their room, but you can give them beads for doing other chores as well, and they have motivation to work!

best-

Andy

Answer 2

How about letting them pick out a toy from a toy store instead?

Answer 3

If they clean, they get to have free time.