The Right Carrot

Santa delivered the kids a couple of handheld gaming devices this Christmas. Specifically a Nintendo DSi for the boy and a Mobigo for the lass.

As it turns out, he also handed the Wife and I a significant amount of leverage over the kids. It’s taken only a couple of days for them to grok the concept of “earning Wii time” as they now call it. So far, without complaint, they are helping with laundry (the boy actually brought down the kids basket without being asked), the dishes and feeding the animals.

Each achievement is quickly followed with a “Did we earn some Wii time?” at this point. So their motivation is pretty clear. But still, they are contributing and they seem to be making a connection between acting now so that they can play later.

Also, if they can earn time by helping out, they can also lose time through misbehavior. At some point, we might actually have to come up with some kind of system to determine just how much time they earn. Right now, though, the kids aren’t concerned with that level of detail.

That’ll probably be next week. After they decide that we didn’t give them enough time over the weekend.