Accountable Kids - Our Chore System

Just so everyone knows... I totally cheated on the chore system. I did NOT come up with it on my own. :)

I have thought through many different chore systems over the years. One included paying my children approximately $.10 per chore, per age, per day... so a 6 year old would make $.60 for doing chore x, on Tuesday... looking back now, that one was WAY too complicated, and would have been nearly impossible to keep track of with so many kids. Others were much simpler... do your chores, or else. You can guess how well that one worked.

I have finally found a chore system that I really love and that I believe will really work for our family for a LONG time. At this point, it works amazingly well, when *I* am consistent. The good thing about this is that when it doesn't work, I have no one to blame but myself (maybe that's not a good thing).

Anyway, last year, while living in Oregon, a friend of mine tried to explain what she was doing for her chore system with her barely 5 year old (right in between K & D), and her 3 1/2 year old (right between D & C). She was raving over this system and how amazing it was. I was totally skeptical. She only had two kids, I had 5 already. She could focus on her two and help them through their chores, while I was constantly distracted by infant twins among other things. But, this system was not hers either... she had implemented someone else's system also. And the best part... the system had a book that explained it. It also had chore boards and chore cards available for purchase.

So, I borrowed the book, and fell in love. It was so much like many of the systems I had tried to implement in the past (or just design, before I had kids old enough), but it was also super flexible, adaptable for different ages, and much more child driven.

The system is called "Accountable Kids." You can immediately go to their website if you like: http://accountablekids.com/ They've got a quickstart video in two parts at http://accountablekids.com/quickstart.aspx It's about 12 minutes total, and explains the program much better than I can.

When I first fell in love with this program, I decided that I didn't want to spend the money for chore kits for each of my girls, so I tried making our own. It worked all right... but not great, so eventually I caved and bought three chore kits. I even had their names engraved on the boards. I can't even explain why the "real" chore boards and cards worked so much better, but they did! My girls LOVED the boards, and occasionally I would wake up with one of them asking to be inspected for their morning cards so they could get their first ticket of the day.

We've now been using the program for about 5 months, and we've had the "real" boards for about 3 months. The novelty of the system has worn off a bit, but as long as I am consistent about requiring tickets for different activities, it still works! When I am totally lax, and allow things without tickets, then yes, they resist doing their chores. But even when I am consistent, I don't have to nag! If they want to color, but don't have a ticket to pay for the crayons (coloring is definitely a privilege in our house), I just remind them that they don't have a ticket (usually something like, "I'm sorry, you don't have a ticket for that"). Then they figure out what needs to be done to earn a ticket. The power of natural consequences!