I hate paperwork.
I mean I really hate it. I loathe, detest, despise, abhor, hold in abomination, execrate it. Okay. Enough of Roget. (I can't expect to teach the fourth grader how to use the thesaurus if I'm not willing to pick it up myself.) Anyway, I think I've made my point. I just hate paperwork. It is one of the most baneful inventions known to mankind, much like the internet which we're all using right now. And like the internet, it is here to stay.
However...I am happy to report that I have discovered a way around it in at least one area of life.
You know all those parenting and education websites, so full of altruistic purpose and on a mission to make parenting somehow accessible, meaningful, fulfilling, and, well, easier? The ones with those lovely chore charts for parents, labeled or unlabeled charts, full-color or black & white charts, choose your preferred theme, etc.? The ones you need to go hunting for in the first place and spending time and ink (money) printing out in the second place, and never quite seem to get around to using in the third place? Yeah, those.
As well-meaning as they are, they are just another form of good old-fashioned paperwork. Ugh. All they do is remind me how utterly inept I am at filling them out, staying on top of them, remembering what they were for in the first place, and where we might have lost them along the way.
NO MORE. I have arrived! I stumbled upon a little trick similar to one used by a home schooling group in which we participate each week, and I am willing to share it FOR FREE(!) with the whole world.
My two youngest children have been waking up with their alarm in the morning, getting dressed and having breakfast, making their beds, tidying their room, picking up a bit around the house—all without being asked—and completing even more homework than I've asked of them.
So what is this "magic bullet?"
Tickets. The kind you get at carnivals and as door prize tickets at fundraisers. And money, too, so I guess this system is not entirely free, but at least I'm not the one you'd be paying.
Each chore or correctly completed assignment earns the child one ticket, which she diligently and happily stores in a little ziploc baggie under a magnet on the refrigerator. At the end of the week, they can redeem their tickets for money or small prizes.
In the beginning, I had three little baskets of inexpensive goodies such as games, notebooks with pens, art supplies and whatever else I thought might appeal to them. There were three different levels of these prizes, and they were happy. Then we graduated. I told them that they could save up their tickets to get money. If they could handle the agony of waiting to build up 200 tickets, they could exchange them for a twenty dollar bill!
That idea proved to be so exciting that my 10 year-old asked how much money she could get for each ticket (getting the gears going in these young minds is a desirable thing). We worked it out so that each ticket is worth 10 cents, but I wouldn't work with anything under five dollars. At least, that was how it worked until I decided that maybe making them wait to accumulate 50 tickets was asking too much of their childish natures. So, I've been making occasional trips to the bank to take out money in denominations of 10, five, and, most importantly, one dollar bills. Lots of them. This way, I can be prepared each Friday to make the trade, even if they've only managed to earn ten tickets.
The system has, happily, been working nicely. Without any chore charts or other paperwork to muck things up. When the girls finish a task, they ask for the ticket. In the baggie it goes, and we're done. Next assignment. Repeat.
This week we've had a ticket epiphany. They both received a doll for Christmas and have fallen in love/lust/obsession with the American Girl dolls with their mind-bogglingly pricey accoutrements, and my husband and I have been holding out for months, pleading too expensive, no room in the house, too many toys already, etc.
Well...they are now collecting tickets to purchase the above-mentioned items from their own earnings. No withdrawing money from bank accounts, just good old-fashioned work, saving and scrimping, foregoing more immediate gratification for the sake of the end goal.
And no paperwork.
