This week our family got out the picture hanging kit, found an empty section of wall in the kids room and hung up responsibility charts for each of our two children. We had tried the home-made responsibility charts and weekly allowance routine before with a short-lived interest. A friend of mine was selling these very official wooden charts made by Melissa & Doug with pre-marked responsibilities and magnetic smily faces. A few of my friends use these with their children and all have had satisfactory levels of success, so I figured what the heck! Probably the greatest success reported has been the long-term habits for helping out that have lasted even after the responsibility is no longer on the list.

So, on Sunday morning, each of the children got to select the 7 responsibilities they would like to work on for the week and I told them that they have to achieve 30 smily faces in the week to earn $5. My youngest child (5) has taken on the challenge with great enthusiasm, selecting responsibilities that would be challenging to him, such as “taking care of pet”, while my older son (7) has selected things like “brush teeth” and “get dressed” which he has to do anyway. The enthusiasm his younger brother has for tackling challenging responsibilities has prompted him (without my suggestion) to change out some of the easier items on the list and replace them with responsibilities that require more effort, such as “clean my room”. Progress.

Have you had any success with children's allowance schemes that you would like to share? Leave us a comment and let us know what’s worked for you!