Ah, the Power of Stickers



The Holy Grail of Child Discipline:
Fruit Loops

I’ve discussed household discipline, or the lack thereof, in maybe my favorite post ever. Back then, our primary disciplinary method was time-outs. I’m going to be frank, they simply weren’t working. No matter how long or how short, on the stairs or in the room, the threat of time out simply wasn’t enough to motivate away from bad behavior.

So we changed strategies. Our next method was the withholding of privileges. First, the kids lost their wretched “Scooby-Doo: First Frights” video game for a week. This was as much a reward for Andrea and me as it was a punishment for them¹. Next came the “Robots” movie, which they had watched portions of a record 28 consecutive days in a row. Candy and cookies went out the door. So did the I-Pad and computer.

But here’s the problem – none of this worked. Pretty soon we were withholding basic human rights. Since the experts all say consistency and follow-through are the thing, we just had to keep after it. If we said, “stop hitting or I’ll cut off my left pinky,” and there’s another hit, the pinky’s got to go. And so it went with privileges: threaten to take away, bad behavior continues, privileges revoked. We even had a privileges chart that showed WHO had lost WHAT until WHEN, showing that Chiara could earn back the Scooby Doo game in time for graduation from college.

Things kept escalating, but when Cody lost food and water for a week we knew it was time for a change. And so we changed our strategy once again. Our new philosophy is “you attract more flies with Fruit Loops than vinegar.”

Thus began the sticker chart. I cannot believe the power of stickers. Our children will go from acting like animals to little angels with the promise of a sticker on a chart. Mind you, these are the same stickers they could reach into the drawer and reward themselves with any time they felt moved to do so. It’s not beyond Chiara’s reach to draw up a grid on a piece of paper and sticker it to her heart’s delight. But somehow, our chart, and the reward of stickers gets the job done. Plus, there is one additional prize at the end of the rainbow. If the children earn enough stickers over the course of the week they can have the sugar cereal of their choice for breakfast one day.

The children are small, and their minds work differently than mine. This is imminently clear. I would have thought the immediate threat of banishment to your room would curtail bad behavior, but it never seemed to. Little did I know that the distant promise of Fruit Loops in the future could get little ones in line. This parenting gig is a learning experience for sure, and many of those lessons are learned through trial and error. I just wish prior errors hadn’t cost me my pinky.

I do see one risk on the horizon. Chiara has shown some signs of taking a page out of the Cleveland Brown’s book: tanking. She’s figured out that you can’t lose the same sticker twice, and once the week has been blown, you might as well go for broke. What she hasn’t figured out is that losing all her stickers won’t get her Johnny Manziel. It will just lose you a bunch of bowls of Fruit Loops.

 

¹I can hardly begin to describe how bad this video game is. One would think, as we did, that something branded Scooby Doo would be wholesome, harmless, goofy fun. Well this game is full of violence and frustration. First, the characters physically fight the abundant monsters. Scooby literally hits monsters with sausage links; Velma throws books at them. Second, characters must jump from platform to wobbly platform – this is tough sometimes even for me with my video game skills, much less my 3-year-old. And here’s the absolute worst part – despite the anger, frustration and tears, my kids want to play this god-forsaken game all the time. It is something they ask to do almost every day.