Parenting Cents

Sundays are normally pay day at our house.  The girls each turn in their checklists for the prior week, we count up the completed jobs, and I pay them out of our Kid Commission envelope.  This past week being their first week back to school, I’ve had to repeatedly remind both of them to do their jobs when they are home.  It’s made a difference in one sense – their checklists are more complete than in the past few weeks.  There are still many more blank boxes though, which is disappointing to me and should be to them as well.

I decided today that I am not going to remind them about pay day.  We’ll see how much it actually means for them.  9-year-old G, who is saving for that Nintendo DS, went through the Best Buy ad in the paper this morning, hoping to see a reduced price.  Nope.  They didn’t even advertise them this week.  Thinking about her goal apparently didn’t motivate her to do her jobs for today.  Speedy Cat continues to walk around the house in a huff, irritated that it’s nearly 10 AM and his litter box and food dish haven’t been freshened since yesterday.

We’ll see how this goes today.  My prediction: Neither kid will get their jobs done for today – putting them behind for this week already – and pay day will end up being forgotten until tomorrow (at least).  I’ve apparently got to work on the motivation factor.