Pasta sauce and 10p's

I'm not great at being the strict parent I'm a pushover, I let the kids do a fair amount of whatever they please in the hope that leading by example and having fundamental morals will eventually instill in them the qualities they need to get by, and yes pretty much they are fairly well behaved. But more so recently there has been too many occasions when I squirm in my skin at their sheer disorder and disregard to my wishes, and in all honestly it saddens me, so my aim this summer is to rein them in, get them on the same page as me and hopefully make them into model children!

So for the past few weeks I've been talking to them asking them what they thought of various different tactics, one of which I suggested was if we had 4 jars, one each for them and then a main one, and filled the main one with 10p's and each time they did something I was happy about I'd give them a 10p and each time they did something less pleasing I would remove one from their jar and return it to the main jar. They seemed fairly interested in this idea so today I thought I'd put it in to practise, after all talking about great wonderful ideas never will be enough will it, its putting the best plans into action that get results.



So I merrily went and brought 4 jars of sainsburys basic pasta sauce 18p each. and proceeded to the post office to get £20 worth of 10ps returning home pleased with myself and hoping for them to come home from school and enjoy some time decorating their jars which I could then reward them for being good and hey presto we'd be away

Shame is even the best plans don't always work out the way you want.

So I fetch them from school, on the way met an old friend so was talking for 5 minutes longer than maybe I should, which resulted in me being 5 minutes late to the school gate for the older two, and me being late signals major strop from Jake, I have no idea why but he seems to be majorly disgruntled if I'm not standing waiting for him the second he comes out of the classroom, even if I am there literally 30 seconds later. Anyway so that was a bad start, he was grumpy on the way home, mean to his friend and proceeded to push Chloe, not great at all.

We arrived home I tried to lift their spirits, big up my wonderful idea, my great plan, how everything would be wonderful, I was met with 'I don't even want any money!' from Chloe and 'I've been too naughty you're just going to take them away before we start!' from Jake. oh dear, so I tried to stick to my blissful image I had conjured up and said we would forget whatever happened in the past these jars were a new start and we start from now, Chloe still met with such disinterest I was stumped as to what to actually do about it, I genuinely thought this would be completely up her street, Jake still sat with a fowl scowl on his face and the only one who seemed half interested in my plan was my youngest, so I stuck to the idea and started showing him the jars and the money, getting the paper and pens and the argos catalogue out for him, and talking all the time to him about how much of a great idea this was, whilst Jake and Chloe had now decided to team up against my plan and were just laughing together mocking my idea and generally being complete pains.

So I stuck to my guns Mikey helped me set up the jars, put the 10p's in the main Jar. I told Jake to go sit in the Kitchen and Chloe on the stairs.

So much for my lets make them behave well task, it seemed to only mean they behaved worse.

But after a stint apart Jake softened and appologised and then Chloe followed suit, they have behaved well for the remaining of the evening so I guess the jars may work yet.