Friday, March 8, 2013

50 Beads of Different Colors

I gets lots of ideas.  Ideas on all sorts of things.  Ideas on ways to make money, ways to organize my house, ways to decorate or rearrange my house, ways to make my kids behave, ways to teach my kids, ways to help them become better people.... you get the idea.  There are lots of ideas floating around in my head.  Some turn out to be pretty stupid.  Like the time I tried to convince my friend to go in on an ironing business with me.  I HATE to iron.  What was I thinking???  Some turn out to be just too expensive.  Most of my house ideas fall into that category.  Some turn out to be too difficult. 

Recently, I had an idea to help my kids to be nicer to each other.  This idea was based off of a previous idea that fell into the too difficult category.  I won't go into all the details of that one because it was, well, too difficult and didn't work out anyway. 

My recent idea though seems to be working.  To some extent anyway.  The idea is, we have a jar of beads that sits on our kitchen table along side an empty jar.  Every time the girls do something nice for someone else (sans being asked), they get to put a bead into the empty jar.  When they do something nice for their sister, they get to put in 2 beads (cause it's harder to be nice to your sister).  Once the bead count gets to 50, we get to go get a special treat like get ice cream or something of the sort.  They just made it to 50 for the 3rd time.  In fact, they are doing so well, we decided to up it to 100 beads.  Meaning, either it'll take longer to get the treat or they are going to have to be even nicer to each other. 

All of this is really in an effort to get our kids to stop thinking about #1 and think of others first.  It's little things, like if you are in the basement retrieving your blankie and you see your sister's blankie down there too, pick it up and bring it to her.  Or if you got some smarties at school that day, share some with your sisters, even if it is just one tiny little smartie. Or when you are clearing the table and your sister is in the bathroom and hasn't cleared her place yet, get her plate for her. 

They are really in to it.  Granted, sometimes they are only doing something nice for the sole purpose of getting to put in a bead, but still, they are being nice.  I'm hoping it'll catch on at some point and they will just be nice to be nice for niceness sake. 

And you know, when someone does little nice things like that for you, you can't help but feel good and do nice things back. 

So,yay for the kids being a little bit nicer to each other and more thoughtful and yay for me coming up with an idea that actually works!!

2 comments:

  1. I have a lot of crazy ideas, too. Maybe that's why we are friends. But the beads in the jar is a good idea. I might try that.

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  2. Great idea! Thanks for sharing!

    Maryanne helms

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