Good Boy Chart and Reward System

I don't know if the parents of every 2 and 3 year olds experience this, but I must admit that the last 6 or so months with my 2 now 3 year old have been... well trying to say the least. His attention span is so short, his patience is even shorter, and he just will not listen. But the biggest issue was the constant and incessant whining, it had gotten to the point that I was thinking about selling him to the gypsies. We had to come up with something, and I felt like we had tried everything, but nothing had worked. We had a couple of people recommend spanking him, but I just can't bring myself to do that so we had to come up with something else. We tried rewards, we tried time outs, and we tried taking things away... nothing. And then the other night while I was perusing pinterest I saw a "big boy" chart that was perfect. I changed it up to fit our situation, but basically used this as the template.  The chart was the first thing that has worked. We made a really big deal about putting the stickers on the chart every night and reminding Michael throughout the day when his actions weren't going to earn him a sticker, and when he was extra good we let him have two that day or put one on early. We also had to add another layer of complication (cause why not). For every 5 stickers he earned on the chart he got one gold dabloon.(pirate coin), and when he earned 5 gold dabloons he got to go to Freddy's (and ice cream place near our house). I was skeptical at first, but we are going to Freddy's tomorrow so things went better than I had anticipated.

So here's the chart. The categories we used were:
-I listen to mommy and daddy
-I am happy and not whining (we had a really hard time with this one
-I pick up my toys
-I eat my meals and try new foods
-I go to bed nicely.

We tried to pick a combination of things that he would be able to easily accomplish and things we knew he would have to work hard on (cleaning up was easy but whining... well that was a challenge). We had some days where we didn't get every category, but as the week progressed things improved drastically. We reminded him throughout the week that he wasn't going to get his sticker, this helped him shape up quickly!

 Look at his excitement! I found some happy face stickers in the dollar section at target (love that section) and mikey loved them. There were winking faces, sleeping faces, laughing, etc, he was so excited to pick out the color and face.

 This has also helped us work on our counting. behavior and counting, two things that we needed to work on.

 Mikey recently developed an interest in Jake and the Neverland Pirates. If you aren't familiar with the show, throughout it the three main characters receive gold coins called gold dabloons for things accomplished, helping others, etc. and at the end of the show they sing a little song and "count the gold dabloons". So we set up a system where every 5 stickers earned got him a gold dabloon. I found these pirate coins in the party section at hobby lobby and glued magnets to them. We sang the song, counted the coins, and celebrated our success. When he got 5 he earned a trip to Freddy's, and ice cream shop near our house. We are going tomorrow.

 Look how excited he was!

I think the system worked for Michael because Michael loves to see his success and the sticker chart let him track success and show us when he had done well. It also worked because we were able to focus on very specific categories- whining, eating our meals, going to bed, etc. Throughout the day we would remind him, "Michael, that behavior won't earn you a red (orange, etc). So this week was... so much better. We are going to continue this little system until it falls apart but for now it is working and everyone at our house is so much happier!