OH MY GOOD LORD, I WAS this child! 
Not only did I do ALL this stuff, I tried to lure my siblings into the trash cans on garbage day, and got in fights at school at least every other week. Among other horrible transgressions
. I was just a nightmare kid.
My mother was nearly half gray by the age of 30, when I was 10.
I'm a reasonable person now, but I was definitely a sellable child. Sellable very, very cheap.
So what did my frustrated, aggravated, infuriated mother do?
SHE NILIF'd ME.Usually when you use this method on children, you call it "token economy" to be politically correct, but it's NILIF right down the line. And it works even on stubborn demon children. Trust me, I was as rotten a kid as there ever was, and I'm a reasonably responsible adult now.
She got the basic plan from my first grade teacher, who used a less intensive version of this with magnet stars on a chart in our classroom to earn privileges, but who used the version she gave Mom with her kids at home.
Let me tell you the story of
The Marble Rules: or, How My Mother Turned Her Impending Criminals Into a Socially Acceptable Human BeingsShe bought these really pretty Lucite bowls and put them on a shelf in the living room, one for each kid, and a really big one for the parent "bank" which she filled up with marbles, purchased at the craft store in single color bags. I got red marbles in my bowl when I behaved properly (my sister got clear or white and my brother got blue.)
For example, if I got up in the morning and got dressed when the alarm went off without a fight, I got a marble. (I got maybe 3 my whole life for this though.) If I remembered every please, thank you and may I be excused at the table with being reminded, I got 2 marbles. If I remembered to show her my homework without being asked, I got a marble If I did my homework and showed it to her without being asked, I got 3. If I practiced the piano for an hour without a fight, I got 5. She kept a binder on the shelf with the marbles, and we would negotiate fairly regularly about the earn rate of the marbles. Sometimes she would start by saying, "You're earning too many marbles for that, it's not worth that much." Sometimes I would start by saying, "That's too hard. It's worth more marbles than that."
We exchanged marbles for privileges, for which there was a "Give Mom" rate. To go to Cindy's after school, for example, I had to Give Mom 20 marbles. Spending the night with Granny, 50 marbles. Spending the night at someone other than Granny's or my aunt's house, 100 marbles.
If I misbehaved, I LOST marbles. Smacking my siblings cost me 10 marbles, no questions asked, and if I couldn't justify why I'd done it, it cost me another 25. Often I considered it a price worth paying, but I did learn to reflect first on whether that would be the case!
And if we lost more marbles than we had, she would put BLACK marbles in our bowl that we would have to redeem before we could get any privileges. For a long time when we first started this, I had black marbles more often than red ones.
THIS PLAN WORKED. There was eventually an absolutely ritual quality to the awarding of the marbles, the confiscation of marbles, and the paying over of marbles!
And we also didn't get ANY allowance, EVER--it was always on the NILIF principle.
What Mom and Dad did was make up a list of chores, making sure that there were things on the list that even their at that time 3 year old could do, and posted on the refrigerator how much doing each thing was worth. If I wanted money, I had to determine the cost of a thing, and I had to decide how I was going to earn the money, e.g., if I wanted to buy the new Nancy Drew book that cost $2.15, I could choose to weed the front flower bed for $2 and wash the dishes for .25 and then she would take me to the store to buy my book.
One really critical piece of this is that you had to go and ask for the job and agreed to the price before doing it--"Mom, I want to wash the dishes to earn a quarter" or "Mom, I need $3, I'd like to iron clothes for a dime a piece." It's critical to the whole process that terms be set
in advance for clarity, This whole thing falls apart if you let kids do work and then announce "I've ironed 20 shirts, you owe me $2." This will lead to arguments, and you're trying to get those out of your house. Antother thing that's important is that you inspect their work before paying the agreed upon amount--and if the work isn't acceptable, DON'T PAY UNTIL IT IS. This may cause a few arguments at first, but sloppy work is the same as free money! Badly ironed shirts never got paid for, and neither did mowed but unraked lawns!
As we got older, new chores got added, and things were renegotiated over time--like the 50 cents that scrubbing the tub was worth at first became $3 to scrub the whole bathroom as we got older, down to $2 when we were in high school. But if you were desperate for gas money, 3 bathrooms at $2 apiece was enough to get you back and forth to school for a week!
Also as my brother and sister got old enough to want money of their own, it became part of the deal to "lock up" certain chores by signing for them on a big calendar on the refrigerator--after all, mowing the lawn isn't an every day job, and you didn't want to lose your money just because someone beat you to the gas can. It was certainly preferable to mow the lawn for 2 hours to get the $5 than to iron clothes for 4 hours to get the same $5. To get paid, you had to finish the chore before dinner on weeknights, or noon on the weekend; if you didn't do it by then, someone else could steal it out from under you. By the time I was 9, we had a monthly family meeting to schedule chores based on what we planned to spend, and so that my parents could make certain that my sibs got a chance at the high dollar chores too.
I actually made good money on the chore chart, because not only could I get my both my grandmothers and my aunt to pay me, some of the neighbors would pay the Mom-set rate for yard work--mowing a front and back lawn for $5, climbing up where the adults couldn't reach to pick fruit out of their trees for $1 per gallon bucket, stuff like that--and some of the older ladies would also pay for housework--$2 a room to do the dusting, $5 to clean the kitchen including mopping--$7 to also wax the floor. The brilliance of it was that I could make as much money as I decided I needed, which is how I was able to feed Nicki, my best beloved--Mom said if I was going to feed a huge dog that wasn't mine, I was going to do it with my own money! Between making other kids give me a can of food to play with her in my yard and the food I bought with my chore money, Nicki got to be a big, strong girl. She was worth 20 times what she cost me.
Only 2 things cost us cash, once we'd earned it. It cost a dime if you left a light on in an empty room, and it cost a quarter for profanity. At one point, Mom got as much as $10 bucks a week from my cussing, because frankly, I was either going to HIT my siblings, or I was going to CUSS them. It was up to me which price I was willing to pay--cash or marbles!
This is what you do to start. Sit down and brainstorm 4 lists:
1-good behaviors that you'll give marbles for and at what rate;
2-bad behaviors that you'll TAKE marbles for, and at what rate;
3-what their privileges are, and how many marbles they have to Give Mom to do it (if something's not on the privilege list, then a kid can't do it until it gets negotiated AS a privilege and a cost is set!);
4-a price list for chores.
One important key: begin with make the chores 1 simple thing, and the price low--.25 to set or clear the table, .25 to load the dishwasher, .50 to wash pots or pans by hand, .10 to sweep the kitchen, .10 to clear and wipe the counters and table. Let you kids figure out for themselves that by asking to to multiple chores they make more money. As they get older, the chart can reflect "Clean the kitchen after dinner: 2.50" For now, make every small chore something they ask to do for a very little amount of money.
This is also really, really good for basic math skills. I learned allabout cash and making change from the chore chart, and would even sit down with a pencil at the table, trying to figure out how to combine chores in such a way that I didn't have to WORK any more than I could help, but to put the most money in my pocket!
You can make posters to go on the wall, or you can use a notebook or binder to put on the shelf where the bowls live. (My friend Desi uses really cute padded separate binders that she decorated thematically to match good/bad behaviors, a cute yellow lace one for the privileges, one in green checked flannel for the chores prices, all with the lists in page protectors. They update the lists using the computer once a month, a chore which currently pays $3, with a dime deduction for every typo.) The initial lists should probably be about 20 items or so, but they'll expand pretty fast; I recommend the books, because posterboard can get unwieldy in a hurry!
Anytime your kid does something worthy that's not on the "give a marble" list, say "I think that deserves a marble," add it to the list and negotiate the marble rate if said kid thinks it's worth more than one. Keep the rates low; as kids get older, some things, like saying please or thank you, can be dropped off the list, or even turn into a "take marble" item like not saying please or thank you becoming a penalty instead of doing it being a reward.
Any time your kid does something that makes you want to take a marble, work on it using 3 strikes rule. My mom would say the first time, "I don't like [whatever it was], and if you do it again, it's going to cost you marbles." The second time, she would say, "I told you before that I don't like [whatever it was], and that it's going to cost you marbles. I'm taking [X] marbles out of your bowl every time you do that from now on." And she would write it on the list, to confirm that she was serious. And if we were stubborn enough to keep doing it, the third time she would just say, "All right, I warned you, you little demon child." And she'd take the marbles. And after that, it was , "12 marbles, and knock it off or it will cost you double, plus you'll get a spanking!" Oh, yes, we got spanked too if we were horrifying enough. There was a whole other level my parents were willing to go to if greed wasn't enough of a motivator!
Misbehaviors must cost DEARLY. Example from life: If getting up and getting ready for school without a fight EARNS 1 marble, saying please-thank you-may I be excused at breakfast earns 1 marble, and feeding the dogs without a reminder earns 3 marbles, for a total of 5 marbles earned before school, then simply calling your sister "stupid" will wipe out a whole morning of good behavior because name calling costs 5 marbles for every name called. In fact, if you call your brother "stupid butt-head" that's two names, and now not only have you lost the 5 marbles for this morning, but the 5 from practicing piano for an hour without fighting last night as well!
A few things should cost both marbles and money, like birthday parties--I had to earn the privilege for like 50 marbles, and I also had to pay for the present myself. I knew people whose parties I was invited to that I didn't attend because even if I liked them enough to buy them a present, they weren't worth my marbles! Also movies, even with Mom and Dad, I had to have both the 20 marbles and the ticket money. Otherwise, they went to the movies without me!
This will work on your horrible daughter, because it engages her BRAIN as much as anything. She's going to try everything she can think of to get around your system. The beauty thing is that the more she does this, the more the system expands--every rotten thing she does, you just start subtracting marbles for. And she'll start identifying things she does that she thinks deserve praise that you're not giving her credit for that you can either negotiate a rate for, or explain why it's NOT worth a marble, but that you appreciate that she does it. That will help you understand a quite a bit how her thought process is working as she gets older.
Believe it or not, my parents actually used the marble plan in a limited way right up thru high school, and it still worked. If we wanted to drive to a dance , it was 50 marbles. (It only cost 10 if someone else drove.) If we wanted to do a play, I remember really clearly it was 20 marbles a week, because I had to drop out of a production once after I had a huge blowup with my sister one weekend over her stealing my clothes, and I couldn't come up with a way to come up with the marbles in only a day and half! But what we had to do to get the marbles also turned into more complex tasks--like helping my brother with his homework when he asked was worth 3 per hour, or acccompanying someone who had to sing in church was worth 10 or 15.
One funny side effect: Because we had to PURCHASE our privileges right along, my parents rarely had to ground us. We grounded ourselves by 'losing our marbles.' My mother would laugh her @ss off--" You know you can't go to the movies with Joni. You've lost your marbles!"
Trust me, if this plan worked on my stubborn, evil minded, self-directed child and obstinate teenage self, it will work on ANY kid.
It's all about being completely consistent and having something very visible like the marbles as a reminder about behaviors, and having things concretely written down so that the expectatons on both sides are very, very clear. If it's in writing, then nobody can say "I didn't know!" The worst that happens is "That's not on the LIST!", at which point you PUT it on the list!
This plan worked so well that when I started babysitting every night after school for a family down the block (because it looked like it would pay better money than the chore chart
) I instituted the marbles and the lists with my new charges. I went to the dollar store and bought them little bowls for their marbles to keep in their rooms, and told them when I was in charge, the Marble Rules were in effect. It only took about a week for their parents to catch on that this "game" I was playing with their kids was having some real results; they bought nice big bowls to put in the living room and it worked at their house just like it worked at home on me!
Sit down with her dad this weekend, make your lists, and NILIF her starting on Monday morning!!
