Behavior Chart

A month ago Sarath was having trouble listening to us at home and also at school. We started getting notes from the teacher saying he was not paying attention and was not following instructions. We noticed that we were having the same problem at home. We had to give him multiple reminders for everything and even after that, he would just ignore us. We were really out of ideas as to how to deal with the situation.

Then one day suddenly, I got this idea for his behavior chart. We used this method before and it worked for a while and then it stopped working. So, I was thinking about how to make it work and then it hit me. I told him he will get green, yellow or red points for his behavior.

If he finishes a task with out reminders and does a good job – he gets a green point

If he needs 2 – 5 reminders – he gets a yellow point

If he is given more than 5 reminders  – he gets a red point

Every green point gets him 4 pennies, every yellow point gets him 1 penny and every red point takes away 4 pennies. We color each square according to the points. At the end of the week, we help him calculate the number of pennies and he gets to put that in his kiddy bank. He is very excited about getting pennies that he struggles to get a green on every thing. It is going good for the past 3 weeks. (I just hope I am not jinxing it). There are some things he always get a green and there are still some tasks where he gets a red almost every day. We just keep reminding him to do his best everyday. The good part so far is that he is doing a lot better in school.

Another advantage with this system is that he is learning to calculate money ( he has to add up the total points and then tell us how many quarters, nickels and pennies we need to give him). He is also learning about saving money. He already started planning about what he wants to buy with that money. I am glad that it is helping in more than one way.

Here is the chart: