Reward Chart Updates!

January 15, 2011

Reward Chart = Success!

To be honest, I wasn't sure how this would go. But after two days, I have one thing to say. If you have never tried this approach, DO IT NOW.

To restate my two huge goals - 1.) Get Silas sleeping in his bed all night and 2.) Get Eli potty trained.

What are the results, you ask? Well...

Silas has slept ALL night in his bed the past two nights, walking out of his room in the morning with the hugest, proudest grin you've ever seen, as if he has conquered the world. Putting stickers on his chart brings him the ultimate joy. He counted all the empty squares to figure out how many days it would take for him to fill it up so we can go to Disneyland. I thought he'd be a little discouraged at how many days it was. The opposite. He is excited!

And then there's Eli. Really, the whole potty training thing was my biggest fear. I hate to say it, but I had little faith in how this would go based on my previous efforts. After almost two hours on Thursday night of trying to the point of him being discouraged and saying, "I can't do it." "I don't want to be like Silas, I want to be Eli." "I don't want big boy underwear. I want my diaper." "I don't want to.", in a last ditch effort, I took him to the big potty. He had been sitting on his little potty while watching a movie and chugging a bottle of water. I told him, "Eli, you CAN DO IT! You are such a big boy. Just try!" And, voila!! He DID it!

Of course, I went bananas. Silas and I made a huge scene, cheering and clapping. You should have seen his expression. He pulled both hands up to his face and was beaming with a smile that stretched ear to ear. He was jumping for joy and proudly put a sticker on his chart. At that point it was bedtime, so I put a pull-up on him with his big boy underwear over them. After all this, I still wasn't sure how the next day would go.

He woke up, I took him to the bathroom and guess what? He went!! I put him in a Pull-up, only because we had to go to work and school. I asked Miss Jennifer to please ask him if he needed to go during the day, not really expecting that he would do it. Around 10:00 a.m. she called me, and to my surprise, he went potty for her! Hurray!!

To make a long story short, he went 5 times yesterday with NO accidents. After school we went to Target so he could pick out some super duper cool big boy pants and he picked some Cars themed ones.

All I can say is "Wow!" I seriously can't believe it. Hopefully today is just as successful. I guess his stubbornness can be used to his advantage. He is so determined to go that if I ask him if he needs to go and let him try, if he can't go - he get's really upset. He really, really, really wants to go every time. It's almost funny.

So, what's the moral of this story? If you are a mom and you have goals with your kids... GET A REWARD CHART!