Hum Week 1

HUM/176

To Test a Theory

April 22, 2012

Jean Thorndike

When you make the decision to have children as parents we have the daunting task of getting our children to perform their chores. Chores that are as simple as picking up your toys, completing homework, and going to bed, and other various chores that we ask our children to complete. As a young mother, with one son who is two, and a stepdaughter who is 8, I was having a difficult time getting my children to complete their chores. The first method I used when the discipline method. If you do not complete your chores you are grounded. Today, this method is different than when I was a child, (when I was a child it was acceptable to discipline your children, today you can’t lay a hand on them without getting into trouble.) when I was this age this method worked for me. In today’s world, this method wasn’t working and I had to come up with another method. After doing some research and talking with friends and family, I learned about the reward method. Since the first method didn’t work, I didn’t see a risk in trying this one. After doing some research, I found that to have this method work for my family that I needed to have a visual item for my children to look at. I made a chore chart with each of my children’s names and what chores they needed to complete each week. Once the chore was completed they could place a sticker next to the chore. At the beginning of the week I would allow my children to choose what reward they want to be working toward. Allowing them to choose what reward they wanted to work toward give my children something to work toward.

After implementing this method, I found a similar method on the Internet. The information that I found stated that this method is highly recommended by psychologist for many reasons. This method gives parents reassurance that it is not how they parent that is affected their children. This method is successful and has children feeling...