Finally found the right Currency

For you non-parents out there "currency" refers to what your child would do anything for to obtain. In my case I'm referring to S and his problems with hitting/tripping. This is one of the little issues with ADHD and expressive language issues they don't tell you about. For S his currency is sleeping on the top bunk of his bunk beds.

Seriously - this works. K thinks it's nuts, but I told him if it works we stick with it. When we started focusing on the hitting/tripping issue he'd do it everyday and most days multiple times. We started with time outs - they helped and the incidents were down to one/two times a day a few days a week.

Then my dad and K got their act together and got a railing and ladder built for the bunk beds in S's room. Not sure how it happened, but S was on top and R was on bottom and they weren't going to sleep.........fine, S on bottom and R back in his room.....that's when I noticed that S saw sleeping on top as a reward/privaledge - not just a right since he was the eldest.

So, every night while we're having dinner I ask S how was his day, what was the report from school and did he hit/trip? It was a slow start, but this last week he went all week w/o getting in trouble for hitting/tripping - even with R here most of the week.

In a few weeks if he keeps it up I'm going to add following directions the first time he's told/asked to his list of things we expect each day. It's a slow progress.....but hey we're making progress! Too bad I can't get his dad to actually do anything about the boy's behavior. Once again I think this summer I'm going to request a slight change in our custody schedule so that the boy is at our house more.....especially now that he's going into K next year.

Oh, don't get me wrong......it's no easy task discovering your child's currency......especially when you have more than one kiddo and each is different. Now I'm off to discover T's........I'll post back in a few years when I figure that one out!