A New Deal

Today is Day One for Little Mango 1.

Yesterday was a big day, it was Day Zero, which culminated at 8pm last night with a frank and open discussion between the big mangos and the young padiwan. He wasn't in trouble, there was no malice in the talk at all – in fact we had hot Milo and biscuits, a laptop, some butcher paper and a marker. It was time for things to change.

One of the main things is we wanted to take charge of our parenting style rather than just let life take us where the wind blows. And we wanted to bring an end to Little Mango 1's current temper streak, introduce reward into his life, and show him the benefit of hard work – to give him a whole bunch of motivation in life. We think one of the problems with having a caring relationship with your child is that eventually they will come to get accustomed to the regularity of it, the routine of it, the constant knowledge that we will sort out any problems they have; we needed to go beyond this – we needed to show we care above just superficial lines. Like I've said before, being a parent means a lot of hard work and being able to make the decisions that no-one else can make. This is where the new economy of Mangotown came from.

'From now on (Little Mango 1), we deal in money.' is what I said to him, and then started to explain the plan, encouraging him to join in and add to the plan himself, to get him thinking about the plan with a positive outlook. We don't know if any of it's going to work, but I think it's a good plan.

Here's the deal:

From now on, most things that happen in the Mango household run on currency. What that means is that there are two lists on the wall at the moment. One of the lists contains jobs Little Mango 1 can do to earn “money” (Not real money; fake money that I made last night with Yoda and Spongebob and other assorted characters on it, and the Chuch Norris seal of approval). These can be simple things like getting ready in the morning without the constant hassle (obviously still a problem), setting the table, cleaning up his room etc etc etc. Next to the job is the amount of “money” that Little Mango 1 can earn; the kicker is that he gets one amount of money for doing the job without complaint, when asked – and another, much higher amount of money if he takes the initiative himself and just does it without being asked. So, for example, if he gets ready for school in the morning when we ask him, without complaint or constant chasing, he gets $1; if he does it by himself without being told, he gets $5. So obviously it doesn't take much to understand that the incentive is there for him to do these things by himself. It helps him because it pays him a great deal more “money”; it helps us because he is doing something we desperately need him to do, and it puts a threat there that is real and practical – if he doesn't do the job, he doesn't get the money. This addresses the fact that we need him to do things around the house, but also that he will, and indeed already does get reward for putting effort in; it goes towards improving motivation. We don't take money off him if he doesn't complete the job, because that would be counter-productive and the system would quickly go to pieces – if he does the job, he gets paid, if he doesn't, he doesn't. And, admittedly, he probably does some of these jobs now quite well, and although we talk about reward, this system is a way for it to be directly measurable. Because, the thing is – he will need this “money” to do, pretty much anything else.

Next to the list of jobs is another list – the list of prizes. For a range of “dollar” amounts, there is a prize. The prizes range from simple things like 30 minutes TV time, money to spend after Karate at the shop to bigger things like day trips, going to the movies, toys; to massive things like big things he wants, holidays. Of course, a lot of saving would have to go into going towards those things, but they are there as an achievable prizes nonetheless. Pretty much everything that he wants to do (we have excluded things like eating, having shelter, paying for electricity or playing with friends obviously) will cost him. From $7 for a short amount of time on the Wii (something he likes doing), $20 for Movie Night (something we do every week in the Mango house, but will now be something that is measurably earned), to $500 for a day outing and so on. The prizes are all easily achievable, as they should be (reward schemes don't work unless the child can see benefit, as you can probably imagine), and most of them are things that Little Mango 1 came up with, or agreed to in the discussion, with excitement. What this does is make a clear connection between hard work and greater reward (especially if he is industrious like building the robot to do his jobs for him; or outsourcing his work to his younger siblings.... and me, which he came up with last night), giving him an idea that all the things he wants in life will cost him. It might seem harsh, but it's really just a way of shifting the workings of his life over to an effort and reward economy – he gets the rewards now, and does some of the jobs but none of them are kept track of, so there is no connection between him helping us and him earning rewards. This system does exactly that.

It also gives him an understanding of the benefits of savings. So when he does a job without being asked, he'll get $5, for example. He might do another job, and get another $2 for doing a job when we've asked him to do it. He could, straight away spend that accumulated $7 on 30 minutes on the Wii, or he could look at his reward list and think, 'maybe I'll keep that aside to go towards the Movie Night at the end of the week, for which I need $20'. It may not work like this, I'm not giving any assurances, he is human so things like this cannot be set in stone, but that's what the system is designed for. The idea is that if he saves and gets something big he wants, then he will be more inclined to do so again; he will get the idea that if he just keeps working and doesn't spend it all on little things, he can have all that he wants.

Now, there is also two more rules that apply. The first is that if he does something wrong (by wrong we mean intentionally bad, behaviour which he agreed was not acceptable – like yelling at us or slamming his bedroom door (which he is getting exceptionally good at lately)) he gets fined. The fine is $5. Obviously it depends on how serious the infringement is, but $5 is a good place to start. Now, we're introducing a system of punishment that is also directly measurable, and he can see has a practical downside. Little Mango 1 actually wanted it to be $10 (which is strange but Mrs Mango assures me it's something that kids always do) but we settled on the smaller amount. The second rule is the most cunning part of my evil plan – the “money” he earns is real. Not real in the sense that he's taking it out of my wallet (good luck to him there!). Real in the sense that we print it out and hand it to him when he completes a job. Then the money is his. When he wants to spend it, therefore – he has to know where it is. This means that he has to take care of it – keep it in a place where the other kids don't get it, keep it somewhere he remembers, and make sure all of that which he has earned is there. If he doesn't physically have the money with him, he can't spend it. There is no bank to hold his money, there is no lines of credit, there is just cash. This whole part of the plan came out of the fact that one of the things we've noticed (as have others) is that he is a little disorganised (I don't know where he gets it from :). This system is to help him concentrate on things he needs to take care of. But not only that, many of the jobs themselves have this little plan entangled within. For example: cleaning up his room is a job, unpacking his school bag is a job; cleaning up his clothes is a job; cleaning the lounge room is a job. All these things are not just jobs because they really help us out – they're jobs because they're something we want him to learn. And rather than fight with him every day to do them, brandishing only empty threats and vague rewards, this system encourages him to do the things we want him to learn to do, and rewards him when he does. He has control over getting what he wants, by understanding everything has to be paid for. Every gain or loss is his own doing, every reward or punishment only achieved through his own actions. Sure, we can fine him if he's exceptionally naughty, but the rest of the time it's just positive reinforcement, and it's all up to him.

See, people only do things in life that they want to – this includes things you may not like doing like cleaning your house or eating broccoli; you still do them because in your heart you want them done. You can't create this sort of behaviour, you can't be made to understand these things until you come to these conclusions on your own; that what you want, anything you want in life, has to be paid for somehow. It may seem harsh, but we're not preparing our children for Smurfville here; we're preparing them for the real world – a crocodile may teach it's baby to be as nice as pie to the rest of the world and have lots of fun as a child, but if it doesn't teach it how to grab things on the side of the water and drag them under for food, then the entire parenting exercise is useless. And you may say that we're going to make him miss out on a childhood, but that's the exact opposite of what we are doing. We are giving him his childhood, letting him have all the fun he likes, and giving him the wonderful sense of achievement in the process.

Hopefully.

As with any of the schemes, all of this can only be a gamble and we all know the problem with best laid plans. I'm confident it will have some effect, so is Mrs Mango, hopefully enough thought has gone into it and it's adaptable enough to be changed easily – so that's probably good enough for us right now. The rest is just hard work and determination – his and ours.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates as this crazy little adventure continues.......