Motivate Your Kids to get Their Jobs Done

Ideally, my kids would get all their schoolwork and housework done in a timely and superb manner.

Ya,  well….that doesn’t always happen.  (We won’t even discuss right now how often it doesn’t happen.)   Sometimes we need to switch it up a bit; we need to change things and make them more fun for everyone.  One way you can do this is offer a super fun incentive.

What could be more motivating than games and pizza?  Not much.  So how about earning tokens to use at Chuck E. Cheese (or someplace similar)?  It works for all ages, including husbands.

How we set it up…

The kids were given their typical daily “to do” lists comprised of schoolwork and chores.  However, there was a number written by each task.  The number correlated to how many tokens that task was worth.  Once they completed a task, got to collect the appropriate number of tokens.

*I would suggest purchasing tokens ahead of time to encourage participation, but it definitely is not a requirement.  Having the tokens on hand seemed to make it more real and more fun.  They got to actually see their piles accumulate.  You can even grab some of the official token cups to use.

Most of their assignments were worth only one token.  Some tasks didn’t even earn a token.  A few tasks were a bit higher.  Completing their chores earned them two tokens and a clean room earned them five.  Their rooms were out of control.  Setting this as a five was actually pretty low for the effort needed to get the job done.

*Decide when you will go before you announce the challenge.  This makes the idea of getting to go play more tangible and they will be more willing to work.

*Decide how many tokens are realistic.  They do still cost money and you don’t want to spend seven hours at Chuck E. Cheese waiting for your kids to get through playing all their tokens.  I think 20-30 tokens per child could be completely fair and worthwhile.

*Decide how long you want the challenge to take place.  Do you want to spread it out over a week, with the option of only earning a few tokens each day?  Or maybe you just want to spend a day or two with more tasks or harder tasks worth more tokens.

*I suggest NOT taking earned tokens away.  It can be tempting if things start to backfire and your child doesn’t want to work, but it’s really not fair.  Let them keep what they earn.

As a bonus, print off calendars for a specific task at Chuck E. Cheese.com.   These allow each child to earn an additional ten tokens.  You can also you can print off coupons for food and your kids can play games on the website to earn tickets to go towards those fun and colorful prizes when you get to the restaurant.

This is a fun way to add some motivation to the same ol’ tasks every once and awhile.  Work hard.  Then go play hard.  Play, eat, and enjoy your family.  Don’t forget to take a picture!