Un"chart"ed Waters

Un”chart”ed Waters by Stacey Holmes

I have a confession to make. I have been a parent for eight years and have never used a reward chart. I am sure this puts me in some type of “needs improvement” parenting category. I know it is commonly used by parents to get children to exhibit certain behaviors, such as keeping rooms clean and being nice to siblings. My perspective has been that I am not going to reward my kids for something they should be doing anyway. (Not that this strategy has led to my desired results. Come to our house and check out my kids’ rooms.)

Well everything changed last Sunday. It wasn’t intentional, just an organic unfolding. At dinner, an idea popped into my head. I suggested we go around the table and each of us name a goal we can work on during the coming week. I thought it would be a worthwhile family activity. In anticipation of things going south very quickly, I clarified the scope. This is not about “playing as many video games as possible” or “collecting all the Hello Kitty stuff you can”. To set an example, I started by saying I was going to focus on being a better listener. Our son, Aidan, chimed in, “I know one for Daddy, don’t be stressed at work.” (Sorry, Daddy, he called you out.) Our daughter, Grace, piped up, “I know, I won’t hit Daddy in the nuts.” Yes, that is what she said. Not wanting to judge the integrity of her goal, I suggested we add another one for her. To which she offered up “Being a good friend.” For our son, we landed on him making better word choices; i.e., no “suck”, “stupid”, or “idiot”.

This is going to be great, I thought. Everyone is on board. We will have some valuable discussions. The kids will see that parents have to work on things too. We will be building character and strengthening our family.

The next day I made a chart to show our progress. At dinner, we would each say what we thought we deserved (happy face, sad face, or so-so face) and why. Then we can draw it on the chart. At the end of the week we will see who has the most happy faces.

Well, we lasted one day. By the second day, things quickly unraveled. I realized that this exercise, for my son, became more about making sure the other people, in particular, his sister, got a sad face. Throughout the day I heard, “Grace did x, y, and z. She wasn’t being a good friend to me.” For my daughter it was more about being able to draw what she wanted on the chart – she just wanted to do art.

At dinner that second night, chaos ensued. There was fighting over the pencil, arguing who gets to go first, why this is unfair, why the other deserves a sad face but they are drawing a happy face for themselves – all of this going on at a 10x normal octave level. To put out the fire, I took control of the chart. I posted it back on the wall, but this time, out of reach, but not out of sight. There it has stayed for the last several days. We are in a holding pattern until we figure out what to do next.

Where to go from here?

• Chalk it up to experience and move on.

• Do a post-mortem analysis.
  • Maybe I should have taken control over what gets put on the chart.  
  • Maybe I shouldn’t have made it into a “competition”. (My son inherited the “must win” competitive gene from me.)
  • Why did I think it would work out without having planned for every possible digression? I keep hoping that one time, one thing would be easy but to no avail.

• Have a family talk and try again.

I don’t know. But I am glad we tried it. No, it didn’t go according to plan. But that doesn’t have to mean it was a bust, right? There were some useful insights that came out of it. My son’s comment about my husband’s “stress at work” was enlightening. We got to witness what each of us was working on. We talked about the concept of “being a good friend”. The other night my son told me that he was able to catch himself before saying any “bad” words. He made it through the day without so much as a “suck”, “stupid”, or “idiot” (Not sure I can say the same.). Last but not least, it motivated me to write this article which gave me the chance to take time and reflect.

So you might be thinking, is she now a “reward chart” believer? Will she do it again? The answer to both is a qualified yes. Sometimes when we think something is a “failure”, we realize later that it is an opportunity for growth and therefore, by that mere fact, a success. You just need to give it a chance. As my daughter always says, “you never know.”