The Putthoff Pages: The Reward Chart

The Problem: For over a year, our nights have consisted of us waking Mary and taking her to the bathroom before we go to bed or letting her wake up on her own and cry until one of us (usually me) gets up to take her. Once in a blue moon, she will surprise us and hold it all night, but that's rare. We decided it's time for her to start doing it on her own.

The Goal: Go to the bathroom by herself at night without crying.

The Method: A reward chart. For every night that she's successful, she gets 1 smiley face sticker. An unsuccessful night gets an X. 7 Stickers earns a reward.

The Reward: For months, all Mary can talk about is Thomas the Tank Engine. She's obsessed. So the idea that a train would be incentive was a no brainer. "Do you want the kind that cousin Gus has that you push around or do you want the kind like Jusco where you push a button and it automatically goes?" JUSCO!!! Of course. I guess that's good, since we looked at the exchange and even though they have a rather large Thomas section, they are lacking the most important one...THOMAS. Doesn't surprise me. We started looking at the Japanese stores and finally hit the mother load at Toys R Us. Trains out the wazoo. There are push ones, wood ones, metal ones and the all important, battery operated ones. Of course, they are 2,299 yen. Yikes, but worth it if this is successful.

The Process: We've had to adjust the rules a bit. We originally started by saying she had to get 7 smiley face stickers in a row and if she had a bad night, then she had to start all over again. Harsh. Too tough for a 3 yr old. Then the nightmares started and uncontrollable screaming and crying at night that woke Adam, woke us and caused us to have a brief moment of bad parenting and take away stickers as punishment. I regret it, Doug regrets it, Mary doesn't remember. We've moved on and hopefully learned our lesson. (I'll post about the nightmares some other time). So we changed the rule to just 7 stickers, no matter how long it took.

The Prize: Today, Mary met her goal! We loaded up the car and headed to Toys R Us. She couldn't stop talking about her train and how next she's going to work to earn tracks. (Shhh, we bought her a train table for Christmas and it's stashed in the closet). We get to the Thomas display and all of a sudden she sees a Thomas balloon. A HUGE Thomas balloon. She, who loves balloons, decides that's what she wants as her prize. Really? Really. 2,299 yen vs 899 yen. SOLD! I'll admit, I tried to talk her out of it. I didn't want to have to deal with "buyer's remorse" when we got home. No worries, she's so stinkin happy. Thrilled. That balloon went everywhere with her today, even around the block for our evening stroll. Because we're still in the early stage of self night pottying, we decided to continue the reward chart with the same goal and the same rules for another prize. Guess what she wants for her next prize? Another balloon! Ah kids, gotta love 'em!

It really is big!