An experiment

We have been having a little too much arguing, finger pointing, name calling and yelling in our house lately.  Maybe it is because it is summer and we are all seeing a bit more of each other.  Maybe it is because everyone is getting less sleep.  It is probably a combination of both.  Who knows, but I am not very happy about it.

The other day, Owen, out of the blue suggested an idea on how we could reduce these kinds of conversations in our house.  I liked the idea, so we have given it a shot.

Each person (including myself and Scott)  gets a cup with $6.00 worth of quarters in it.  Everytime a parent catches a kid doing certain things (we talked about specific behaviors), they take a quarter out of the person's cup that was yelling (for instance) and give it to the person that was being yelled at.  At the end of July whatever is left in your cup, you get to keep.

Now, there are some obvious faults with the system right off the bat (tattle telling, provoking, both kids at fault etc.), but as we are sorting and tweaking the faults I have noticed that the system is working quite well.  The boys really don't want to lose their quarters and are having second thoughts before they fly off the handle.   So, we continue on....