CrossRoads Farm

Token Economy

25 March, 2005 - 8:15 am

I’ve never been able to get my girls to clean up their toys. It’s been an ongoing battle right from the start. Nothing worked. Taking TV privileges away, throwing toys away, standing in the corner, timers – nothing. So last summer I tried, for a short time, a token economy.

It didn’t work.

H ran around the house making messes just so she could clean them up to get a token.

And so I went back to the battle. And the kid’s rooms and the play room got worse and worse.

G has a token economy thing going on at her house. The longer I listened to her little anecdotes about the effectiveness of the tool the more I thought I hadn’t given the idea enough time to work for us.

Then the bank sent us a couple “moonjars.” Each set has three cardboard piggy banks held together with a large yellow elastic band. The boxes are three different colors and very attractively decorated. The banks have categories written on the top. “Save,” “spend’ and “share.” I thought about the situation for a bout a week before I refined the idea enough to execute it.

I got a bag of snowflake shaped sequins. These are the tokens. Each token is worth ten cents. I made it ten cents rather than a quarter so I could be just as generous as I pleased particularly at first.

I sat the kids down with the moonjars and the sequins and explained how they could earn token and how they might lose tokens. Then I gave them some chores. They were done with no complaining in record time. When they came back - I handed out tokens. They discussed between themselves which jar they would put their tokens in and where in their rooms they would put the moonjars. H even negotiated payment for a chore it wasn’t her turn to do.

The flip side works too.

the other day I heard K screaming at H to “Let go of me!” I went up the stairs and saw H holding onto K’s sleeve with both hands and pulling I went up to her with a look like Death and said, very quietly, “Go get me one of your tokens.”
“NOOOOOOOOO!” She started bawling, bargaining and promising not to do it again.

I know this only works because they don’t get a regular allowance. That’s OK with me for now. The playroom is clean and I’m a lot less frustrated

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