Penny Jars

One of the things Mark and I have noticed lately is that our children have been struggling to obey "right away, all the way, and with a happy heart".

Here's a for-instance: Our older three will be playing in the living room, and Mark and I will be in the kitchen. We will say, "Okay, it's almost dinnertime. Please come in and set the table."

What we expect: three cheerful children to show up in the kitchen, and get to work setting the table.

What we're getting: nothing.

Okay, that's not entirely true. Sometimes one of them Ella will head in to help.

Or one of them will come, but reluctantly, or with a disappointed-to-be-asked-to-leave-their-play sigh.

But more often than not, lately it seems as if I'm/we're speaking and they are simply not paying attention. Which means I am continually having to repeat an instruction, and that leads to exasperation and frustration on my part.

Recently I was reading through the comments section of this post, and one of the comments there gave an idea, which we have since implemented.

Here's the idea:


Penny jars. We've told our kids that each time we ask them to do something and they respond with a cheerful and willing "Okay, mommy!" and then obey right away, all the way, and cheerfully, they can put a penny in their jar.

So far, so good.

I have three cheerful children, absolutely motivated to get pennies in their respective jars. And hopefully re-learning the habit of cheerful obedience in the process.

And I am thankful to be able to spend my days looking for ways to reward them, rather than getting cranky with them.

Plus: think of all the fun we'll have learning about money when it comes time to change out their pennies for nickels, dimes, and quarters!

He who scorns instruction will pay for it, but he who respects a command is rewarded.
Proverbs 13:13

Verse #7 (and our new habit)

In all honesty, I feel a little cheaty about choosing this verse to memorize. Not that "cheaty" is a word. [In fact, spell check is clearly telling me that it's not. Spell check would prefer that I use the word chesty, actually, but I'm ignoring that and moving on.]

Well. Here's the verse, and then I'll tell you why I feel cheaty about it.

A cheerful heart is good medicine,
but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.

Proverbs 17:22 (NIV)

A good verse. And I need it. The cheerful heart part. I really struggle lately (okay, maybe always?) in sounding like a drill sergeant with my children, and I want so much to be a joyful, fun, smiling mama. [This morning I literally thought about hanging up a big sign for myself that says, "Lighten up."]

But the cheaty part is that I already know this verse. Not that I've actually taken time to memorize it before, but it's just one of those verses that I've heard so many times that I know it already. I don't know the reference, though. So I will be memorizing that.

But even though it feels a bit cheaty, I'm going with it, anyway. I'm still working on memorizing the last two verses, and because, like I said: I need the cheerful heart this verse speaks of, and it will be good to meditate on the verse and pray toward that end.

The kids are memorizing it, too. Cheerfulness is the new habit we're practicing. They're far quicker than I am at learning, and I figure if they "get" it and walk around all cheery and smiling, it just might be contagious. I've also bribed them just a bit, by telling them that the cheeriest child gets a jelly belly at the end of each day. [That may not seem like a lot to you, but to our children who rarely get candy, one jelly belly is ALL it takes.]

The Habit of Attention

There are several things I admire and have gleaned from Charlotte Mason's writings, and one of those is her concept of forming good habits. She writes, "One of the great functions of the educator is to secure that actions will be so regularly, purposefully, and methodically sown that the child will reap the habits of the good life, in thinking and doing, with a minimum of conscious effort."

When we began school this year, I introduced a habit to the kids that we were going to purpose to work on together: The Habit of Attention.

We learned this verse:

My son, pay attention to my wisdom,
listen well to my words of insight.
~Proverbs 5:1

and discussed the ways in which each child could show that they were paying attention. Things like:

* looking at me when I speak to them
* answering with "Yes, mama" (so that I know that I've been heard)
* obeying right away

A few things we did to practice this habit:

*I wrote the habit and the verse on our school board so they would see it every day.
*We memorized the verse and recited it a few times each week. [We even made up motions, too, to go along with it.]
*I had a weekly conversation with them about how we were doing in learning our habit. We reviewed the ways they should be showing me that they were indeed paying attention.
*We had training sessions. We'd sit together on the living room floor and I'd give an instruction, one at a time, to each of the kids, and then they would take turns following my instruction while "practicing" the habit of paying attention. The rest of us would encourage that person. [For example, I would say, "Isaias. Please go into the girls' room and bring me a diaper for Adelia." And then Ella, Isaac and I would watch him: Did he look at me as I spoke to him? Did he answer me? Did he run off cheerfully to obey? When he did, we would praise him for a job well done.]

Note: I can't speak highly enough of this kind of training: having children walk through something the right way- while being observed- but outside of the context of everyday life. (What I mean by that is that these are simply practice sessions, and practice instructions. I didn't actually need that diaper. We were pretending. And yet, they are walking through the right responses and the right behavior.) They love this kind of thing: it is a game to them, and they happily oblige. It's a good reminder for me, too- to be more diligent in following up our correction times- where we've just discussed what was done wrong, why that was wrong, what will you do differently next time?- with an actual task for them: "Now show mommy how you should have asked for that toy. Do it the right way this time."

*On days where I felt like we weren't doing well at all, we played a game where I had the kids looking for good habits of attention in one another. (For example, I would say: "We're all going to watch each other today, and if we see someone paying attention well, we're going to encourage them by saying, 'Great job doing Proverbs 5:1!'" On those days it was great to see the kids noticing the good in one another and praising each other.

I was really pleased with how well all the kids took to this idea of learning a habit, and I think we made huge strides in this area of attention.

As we started up school again this week, I introduced a new habit, which we'll add to the other one and hopefully see some good progress there, too!

A few other habits I have written down that we may work on in the future:
-The Habit of Obedience (I tucked that one onto our "Habit of Attention", but this could really be one all by itself.)
-The Habit of Manners
-The Habit of Gratitude
-The Habit of Cheerfulness
-The Habit of Thoroughness
-The Habit of Responsibility

Would you like to help me add to my (ever-growing) list? What are some habits you have noticed that your own children might need to work on? Chances are, we need to work on it here at our house, too!




[Another post on Habits, here.]