Jesse is a big-time video gamer, like a lot of kids his age. The games are not too violent, and his favorite right now is Minecraft, which is actually somewhat creative. But--he spends too much time on them.
Yesterday he asked for a new game, which costs $29.99. He fell in love with it through the videos of a man who has made tutorials for about ten different games. Jesse absolutely adores these videos; he finds them amusing and very informative. So of course, he falls in love with all the games this man introduces to him. And wants them, badly.
I told him that he can get this new game if he does ten things that he doesn't enjoy doing, but needs to be doing every day or almost every day, like brushing his teeth in the morning, clearing the table, and reading/writing/doing math, 15 minutes each every day. (The school year just started and he's only in 2nd grade, so the teacher hasn't assigned homework yet.) I told him that he needs to do each of ten different things at least ten times for this new game. If he does them once each over ten days, he will get the game.
He's so frustrated by this turn of events, and the fact that he's not getting his video game when he wants it (now), that there's a big crisis happening upstairs right at the moment.
Part of me wonders if I overdid it with the "Check off 100 things and you'll get the game" idea. But I think one way or another, he has to learn that he's not going to get everything he wants without some work. Especially expensive video games.
On the other hand--I haven't used the check-off strategy very often, and he really, really hates it. He is generally a good boy, who will do things that we ask him to do...but maybe for him this feels like I'm dumping too much on him all at once.
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