Bean Jar

I'm one who believes in the importance of catching children behaving, and making a special effort to give them positive attention for it then. The idea is to give them more attention when they are behaving well, instead of what is often easier to do, ignore the child till they are behaving badly and give them negative attention then.

A tool that we are trying out in our family right now for this purpose is what we call the bean jar. It is just a bag of beans (we use pasta, anything dry and small will work, rocks, marbles etc.) and a jar to put them into. Simply stated, how it works is; whenever Paul or I catch a child doing something correct or admirable they get to put a bean or two into the jar. I keep this in the kitchen bay window so it's within easy reach.

We all have character traits and behaviors that need to be improved upon, and things we need to learn. For example I have one child who is mostly whines when speaking, another who is struggling to share their bedroom with a sibling and another who is struggling to experience new activities. I specifically watch for those behaviors which my children are currently struggling with (they don't know this of course) and recognize when they are improving upon those things by giving them a bean or two, verbal recognition and sometimes a little hug.

As an example, today my son whom I've not required learn to make his bed yet, proudly showed me how he made his bed. He got to add to our bean jar.

Sometimes I get silly and give them beans for putting their shoes on the right feet, using their spoon to eat their cereal, or hanging upside down on the monkey bars, just to keep it light, a game.

The children are on watch, catching each other behaving, and reporting that to me. We are all working together to reach our goal as a team.

When the jar is full we do something fun as a family that we have previously decided upon. This last month the reward was a day at O.M.S.I. (see slide show) Ideally I would add to that some kind of family service project to do so that we are not only rewarding ourselves, but blessing others as well.



This also works well for encouraging children to learn things that they may not be so interested in. In our family with such young children, some examples are memorizing scriptures, praying, reading, writing, dependability, service to others, and developing new skills.

I'd love to hear others thoughts to what you have done or how it can be improved upon.

Love and blessings!