This past weekend, after taking the kids to Santa’s Village and hearing their disappointment that they didn’t get a toy from the gift shop, and watching Ben throw a hissy fit in the library because there were ‘not enough superhero books’, we realized something.

Our kids are spoiled.

It’s something I’ve been fed up with for a while. Increasingly I’ve found them to be ungrateful and entitled. As much fun as it is to spoil your kids, it sucks when you see that spoiling them makes them bratty.

So, I flipped everything in this house on it’s head.

Instead of punishing them by taking away books, desserts, or other treats, I told them they had to wake up each day and earn everything.

I quickly made a list of things that they needed to accomplish each day, getting dressed WITHOUT a fight, no touching, no teasing, helping with the babies, cleaning up toys. I also left some blank spaces for random acts of goodness.

We implemented it yesterday. Both boys were better behaved than they had been in a long time.

And they were so pleased with their checks. They wanted to look at them all day and asked how they could get more. As I’m blogging this, Ben does not have enough checks for an ice cream and the beach (something that Ben and Jack would assume is a god given right before today) so I told him to clean up the toy cars. He sat down to do it right away.

Hmm, I think I’m onto something…