Helping your kids, Help themselves.

Every morning, I go through the daily grind of trying to get off to work and get my son to cooperate and get ready for school.  It never works.  I find myself yelling most of the morning, going to work upset, and late to work on top of it.  I MAY HAVE FOUND A SOLUTION, and I have to share.  Chore charts always help, but I found this site, where your child can earn points and earn rewards.  It is based on the premise of those WebKinz. My son can build a room, decorate it, dress it up, and I can program into it exactly what his chores are.  He has his own log in, and checks off what he has completed.  He does not earn anything until I log in and approve what he has completed.  It's fun, and I have to say, it seems to be encouraging.

I find that my son thrives of routine, schedules, and consistency.  These routines help tremedously when he is not on his medications (weekends, holidays, etc).  So any little routine, or encouragement helps. Chore charts are a wonderful tool to help them do that.  Verbal cues seem to get me nothing but aggravated, because he does not follow them.  Visual cues seem to work, as long as my son can see his progress.  We now have a picture chore chart inside the bathroom mirror for his morning bathroom routines, and he has bedtime routines on the fridge.  I know it sounds silly to do this, but when your child was easily distracted, any routine can be thrown off track quickly, and once they get thrown off track, it is easy for them to forget what they were doing, or what is left to be done.  The best part of the whole thing, was watching how excited he was when he realized he finished everything, and had plently of time, to do the things HE wanted to do.