The Bean Store

I don’t do a lot of sticker charts.

I can’t remember to keep up with them.

I’m not all that great at rewards systems.

But sometime last year I found myself answering the same question one trillion and two times each day.

“Can I play a game on the computer?”

And I was always making up and then breaking various rules and guidelines.

I’d try to time the kids but then forget to see how many minutes they’d actually been on that day.

What eventually developed out of my frustration was a counting system of sorts.

The kids could earn beans for various tasks – chores, completing schoolwork without being reminded, great attitudes.

The beans are placed in a jar and each bean equals one minute of screen time.

Which has actually been a pretty decent working system now for almost a year.

However.

Lately I have noticed two problems. Flaws in the system.

One.  The bean counts have been growing rather high, with minutes accumulating more rapidly than I would like to see them spend in front of a screen.

Two.  Whenever one kid was enjoying his screen time, three other kids were watching his screen time.  And if every kid even took only ten minutes of screen time each, they were suddenly sitting there for forty minutes.  (Or more!)

I needed a solution.

Enter . . . The Bean Store.

For the last two weeks on Wednesday afternoon our school room has been transformed into a store that only accepts one form of currency – beans.

I scavenged the plastic storage bin I keep under our bed filled with low-priced, on sale items for emergency gifts.  You know – the birthdays and events that sneak up on you and require a little special something.

I spread the loot out on the school room table, attached prices and opened the doors to The Bean Store.

As all systems go, I know it will only last a short while, but the kids had a blast.

They browsed.  They pondered.  They counted beans.  They stockpiled a few together to make a big purchase.

This week the purchases made were bubbles, a miniature butterfly (purchased by a kind sister to be given to non-store shopper Sir Otto Fox), a color by number, a mood ring (I knew when I saw it that it would never be picked up by any child other than Mosely), chapstick and noisy putty.  (And of course the noisy putty appealed to Bergen.  Loads of satisfying inappropriate noises have emerged from that two-inch plastic container of gloop.)

And for the last two weeks,

believe it or not,

I have not heard the question asked even one time, “May I have screen time?”