"Mom, why don't you always get me toys at the store? I'm sick of my toys.". Both of my boys have taken turns whining this...hoping it would inspire me to go to the store and shower them with every thing they've ever wanted. It had the opposite effect.
"I love buying you toys on your birthdays and for holidays, but we don't buy toys all of the time. You can always do chores for money though.".
I've suggested this over and over, but for some reason this week my boys sprung into action and decided to earn some money. They started with just one or two things per day. For each chore, we would mark down one mark on a paper. This was the pay chart, each mark equalling a quarter and the agreed payday would be Friday.
Ethan started to get creative with his chores; loading our woodbox full of logs...learning to put away laundry that I had folded....cleaning out my car, the list goes on and on. Will stuck with the dependable bed-making and bringing his dirty laundry downstairs...though he did learn to dust with pledge yesterday under my supervision.
The end result today for payday: Ethan made ten dollars in one week...that's forty chores! Will made $3.75 but ethan and I agreed that it would be okay to round up to four dollars.
We stopped at the bank, and then off to Walmart we went. There was so much to look at. Will settled on a small stuffed puppy while Ethan found a RC car that was just over his ten dollar range. He negotiated with me, and we settled on me helping him pay if he helped me put groceries away when we got home.
My boys are so proud of their purchases that they haven't stopped playing with them. I can tell that they are proud to have earned them and I am proud of them for working so hard. Every chore they did was their idea. It's been a wonderful week.
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