What do you recommend for my 7 year old?

While we answer customer enquiries, we are also adding them to the blog (every now and then) in that it hope it might help some other parents out there!

We recently received this email:

I am looking to order some of your reward charts, but am a bit overwhelmed by all the choice and what may be suitable J

The basic issues I want to tackle with my 7 yr old are:

I guess basic morning and evening routines, they are starting to get a challenge with being told 20 million times

Keeping room clean

Basic behaviour - yelling, arguing with me all of that stuff.

I think he is also at stage where he needs pocket money for say keeping his room clean, putting clothes in wash basket, hanging towels the simple stuff.

This is our response:

We can recommend two products to you based on what you have outlined. They are the Morning & Bedtime Routine and the Reward Chart (5+).

The Morning & Bedtime Routine will help in the challenge of you being a permanent voice recording of the tasks that need to get done both before school and before bed. This chart will provide your child with all the cues (or expectations) of what needs to be done, prior to your son being able to have free time and/or a reward magnet to go on his reward chart, to earn pocket money. When setting up the routine, it is important to go through the process with your child the first few times. Clearly demonstrate the expectation for each task. Then at your child's completion of the morning and bedtime routines if the expectation is not met, they understand why they have not received a reward magnet. The morning and bedtime routine chart includes magnets that colourfully and visually depict the things you have outlined above in keeping his room clean, hanging towels up, putting clothes away as well as things like pack and unpacking lunch boxes and bags, etc.

You may also want to consider adding the optional extra set of School magnets, as this will also create a cue for your son on packing his school bag with things like library bags, sport equipment, etc.

The Reward Chart will help you with the basic behaviour issues, as well as rewarding your son for completing his morning and bedtime routines.

The Reward Chart (5+) includes reward magnets for clean room, homework done, obedience, patience, self control and kindness to name a few. With our Reward Charts we recommend to parents that they identify 3 or 4 behaviours to concentrate on at a time. Then spend some time with your child explaining what behaviours you are looking for and describing/role playing/demonstrating on how they could display these behaviours to you. Then as you see your son demonstrate the behaviour, reward him with a magnet for his chart. At the conclusion of the chart (filling up all 10 squares) you can reward him with whatever you wish, however given his age and your email, we would of course suggest pocket money! Once you identify that you son's behaviour is improving in some key areas you can change the reward-magnets around and choose a new area to focus on.