Counting Beans

I started a reward system with my older son when he turned 3 - just about a year ago. It was passed onto me from a friend and has helped many of my friends who I have passed it onto. We call it bean jars.

You have two jars (like a mason jar size) - one is full of beans (like kidney beans) the other is empty with evenly spaced numbered lines, our lines are at about 100 beans and numbered from one at the bottom to seven at the top.

Every time he does something good: listen and obeys immediately w/o questions, cleans up toys, sets table, goes potty, gets dressed, puts away shoes and coat, shares nicely with his brother, etc, he gets a bean. He gets to take a bean out of the full jar and put into the numbered jar. When the beans fill up to number 1 (the first line) he gets a "special treat", this is a trip to the dollar store where he gets to "chose a prize"($5 or less, candy or toy). Same for number 2-6. When he gets to 7 he gets a "super dooper special treat", this was a trip to an indoor water park (which we planned the timing of our vacation around).

The great thing about beans is you can reward lots of little things and you can chose when he gets them. Sometimes he'll get one for sharing with his brother, other times he won't because he needs to do that regardless of getting beans. It seems to be motivating him. If you have a picky eater you can do a bean a bite for new foods or foods they don't like.

It took about a month to get to a line. 7 mos to fill the jar. As his brother got older and could understand and saw big bro doing it he wanted in. So now they both fill the one set of jars. As they grow the items they are being rewarded for can change. L doesnt get rewards for going potty anymore but he gets them for finishing his dinner or reading a book to his brother. J gets them for cleaning up or immediately listening and obeying. For us it has been a really great motivator. Hopefully more people will find it a reward system that can work for them.

Update for 6 & 4 years old (2013): 

We are doing beans again and they get beans for doing chores, listening and obeying immediately, doing schoolwork with a good attitude, excelling in school work, displaying the fruit of the spirit, etc. We have also added in the removing of beans as a discipline for the "small stuff": talking with your mouth full, arguing or complaining, temper tantrums, bad attitudes, badgering, selfishness, covetousness, etc. I DO NOT advise removing beans for discipline until you have filled the jar at least once. They need to really taste the beauty of the rewards before you can add in negative consequences. The removal of beans is working well for us now that they are older and fully understand. We are considering giving them each their own jar to encourage a little healthy brotherly competition.  They jury is still out as to how well that would work for our kids though.  We'll see :)