I was thinking about my 25 year old son today. Thinking about how I got him to remember things I told him as he was growing up. For a while I excused away stuff under the "Oh, it must the the ADHD." then I got wise.
The first issue I had was chewed bubble gum, wrapped up in the wrapper and placed in his pants pockets. We chew a lot of gum in our family - curbs the gnawing on pencils and fingernails. It would just drive me crazy to go get a load of clean laundry out of the dryer, and find gum stuck all over the drum - melted and baked on like plastic. I had to use Goo Gone, a scraper, and my time to get it off. I told my son to stop putting the chewed gum in his pockets. After the third time, I told him he had to clean the dryer. . . which took him forever to get around to doing. The next time it happened, I wrote him a document stating that "Mom will charge you $10.00 dollars every time she has to clean your gum out of the dryer."
Guess what? After one time of having to pay me $10, he NEVER left gum in his pocket again.
Same thing worked with the clothes chute. He would stuff in too many things at once and it would get blocked somewhere between the upstairs and the basement. I posted a sign near the chute that said "Mom will charge $10.00 AND a 500 word essay to anyone who plugs the clothes chute." It NEVER got plugged again.
We had a running disagreement between my two children about WHO left the 1/2 empty cans of pop lying around. They blamed each other, or even blamed their friends. So my new rule was "For every can of pop that gets wasted, Son and Daughter will EACH get charged $5.00." Of course they proceeded to tell me of the injustice of that rule. However, I reminded them it was up to ALL OF US to remind each other of things, and to "have each others backs." It was also important to remind their friends to drink the whole can of pop so it doesn't get wasted. Amazing how well it worked!!!
One dollar would not have worked. Pinch their spending money, and all of a sudden, they remember quite well!!!
My children's currency happened to be be actual currency.
I totally get this! I tried
Submitted by copingSAH on
I totally get this! I tried something similar with the finances with DH. Instead of telling him we needed to do this and that, I told him how much money could be saved with taking an ounce of prevention. And he actually went along that time.
If things get any worse with my kid not cleaning up after himself, I will have to try the thing with the penalty -- money is important to them, they never forget a penny.