Last week I had the pleasure of picking up Kali from school. Usually, I drop her off and Daddy does the pick up but Daddy was busy so I picked her up. It was a real treat because I got to see Kali's actual classroom versus the "holding tank" that I drop her off at in the mornings. While we were in the classroom, Kali's teacher explained a "new concept" that they were incorporating to encourage good behavior. Basically, there is a chart with 5 goals and Kali gets a sticker for each daily goal that she meets. At the end of the week, she takes her stickers to buy a small prize. I told her teacher that I thought that was a good idea and I told Kali about it. The next day, Daddy picked up Kali and when I got home, he asked if I knew about the new behavior chart. I told him that I found out about it yesterday. Then he asked me if I knew that Kali was the only child who had to do it?!? Whaaaaaat? Noooooo, I didn't know that my sweet-faced little girl was a terror in the classroom!!! Honestly, she does not behave this way at home. She is very mindful but for some reason, she is not listening in class. I was shocked and actually kind of embarrassed. Daddy suggested that we carry this reward program home so that we're reinforcing the teacher's efforts. Now, I am not all for rewarding folks for things they are supposed to do, but she's 2 and obviously what we're doing isn't working so I'll give it a try.
We have a money counting jar that Kali gets a kick out of using. So the next day, Daddy bought Kali her own piggy bank that makes silly noises when she deposits coins. Using the premise of earning stickers, we instead reward her with coins. If she accomplishes her goals at home, she gets to "feed the piggy" which she absolutely loves doing!
Last week was the first full week that we incorporated operation "Positive Reinforcement" and so far, so good. She's gotten the majority of her stickers through the week at school and she responds very well to our system at home. She really likes being called "a big girl" so we're also starting to use that to our advantage. We tell her "big girls behave like this". Along those same lines, we finally have her sitting at the table with us for meals! Yup, bye bye high chair!!! She's almost 3 so it was definitely time, and she likes that she's eating with us. Next step is her crib! *lol* I'm going to miss having her confined to her crib at night!! She has plenty of room in it and doesn't try to get out so I don't even see the point in converting it but I suppose at some point it has to be done. I'm just in no rush to have her be a big girl in that regard! : )
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