this wasn't in the plan |but life is still pretty good

Okay, so probably not. Unless you ask my three year old.

My Wednesday night guilty pleasure is watching Wife Swap and I'm always quite surprised at how often there's someone on there who thinks that having their children do chores is evil and wrong. Because of course the child will just wake up one morning as an adult and have a wonderful work ethic. Right. So tonight I was watching and thinking how ridiculous this one family was when I realized that I need to get on the ball with getting Bug to do more chores around the house. All too often it is just easier for me to do it. And not to mention quicker. But he is quickly approaching the ripe old age of four and there are things, like keeping his room clean, that he needs to be responsible for.

Enter the allowance.

Only I don't think he's ready for his own money. He thinks of money as something to play with and doesn't completely associate it with purchasing things. I don't think it would motivate him at all. He's a tricky one, he often prefers the punishment over doing what I ask him to do, so finding something to motivate him is hard.

Enter the children's museum.

He loves that place. I'm sure he'd do some chores and keep his room clean if going there was the reward. After mulling this over a bit, I've come up with a plan. He knows the reason we don't go to the museum every time he asks is because it costs money. In fact, he once said that if he had a million dollars (while listening to the Barenaked Ladies song with a similar title) he'd go to this museum.

So my plan is that if he keeps his room clean, I'll throw a coin in a jar (because you know we have plenty of those lying around). I have some other things in my mind that will earn coins in the jar, mostly behavior related stuff. Once the jar is full (it'll be a small one mind you) we'll "have enough money" and we can go to the museum. This is all very funny to me because I didn't want to really tie chores directly to allowance. But I think tying it to going to the museum will motivate him and since he already knows about the money and visiting the museum connection, I think it's a good way to teach him the value of a dollar. So that's what I think I'll do, I'll talk it over with The Tall One and see what he thinks.

I've written some other posts on teaching my children the value of money. We'll call this post part three, you can read part one here and part two here.

photo by chefranden