In our home, the discipline for bad behaviors is time-out and spanking, and good behaviors are usually rewarded with oral encouragement, and occasionally permission to watch a movie, but are rarely rewarded with material stuff. With Tristan’s age advances, however, the mere oral encouragement does not seem to be enough. Inspired by the “Super Nanny” show, we came up a plan: if Tristan has been good all day, such as being happy, polite, helpful, and nice, mom and dad will give him a penny (we use penny instead of token because we can’t find any tokens around). Once he gets thirty pennies, mom and dad will take him out to eat, like McDonnald’s, Subway, and Dairy Queen. If he has bad behaviors, we will take one penny back. We explained the rules to him and tell him that every night before he goes to bed, mom and dad will decide if he can get a penny based on his behaviors that day. And Tristan is very excited about the plan, I guess it gives him some kind of hope for eating outside.

He searched all over his room for those previously played pennies and proudly told Yan and me that he already got 21 pennies! He has a very good start point!

One night after a couple of days, after Yan and I finished dinner, we left the table and sat on sofa to talk. Tristan was still eating because he is a slow eater. After enjoyed his meal, he stacked up all our dinner plates and dinner ware, and took them to the kitchen sink! Looking at him holding those heavy dinner plates and walking slowly and cautiously, Yan and I were surprised and nervous. After I praised him for being such a good helper, Tristan said, “Can I get a penny, daddy?”

Yan said Tristan will do everything with a purpose after we set up the rule. It seems she is very right.