Bribes

Ahh, the good old days.  The days when I didn't believe in bribing children.  The days when I thought there was a clear distinction between a "reward" and a "bribe."  

Well, those days are long gone.  At this point, the only difference I can see between a "reward" and a "bribe" is how you spell them.  Which is why when Jason and I developed a plan to help our boys start doing their own scripture reading, we relied heavily on bribes/rewards.  And we've had a decent amount of success.  

Our plan looks like this:  We have the family goal of reading the Book of Mormon.  Josh, Jason and I read the actual scriptures.  Michael reads the Book of Mormon stories book.  And one of us reads the Book of Mormon stories book aloud to Ben and he repeats after us.  Each chapter has a box that we fill in after reading that chapter.  The goal is for us all to finish this year.  Now for the bribes rewards:  We broke the books (either BOM or BOM reader) down into 8 sections.  After completing a section, marked with a light grey box, the boys earn a Wii game rental for one night from Redbox.  This was a wildly popular incentive.  At the half-way mark and at the end, we earn a family ice cream party.  The charts look like this:

And the ice cream party looks like this:

Friday was our half-way ice cream party!  Hooray for ice cream the Book of Mormon!  We've had some rough patches when Josh wasn't at all interested in participating.  And we've had times when it seems like all the boys do is play Wii games because they keep earning them one after the other.  But, all in all, we're pretty happy with the results.  Michael has become a much better reader just within this short time.  They all enjoy discussing where they are at in the scriptures respectively.  And, best of all, some of what they read seems to stick.  Wonder of wonders!