The Consequence Jar

For those of you wanting to know more about "The Consequence Jar", here it is....

It's hard to find away to discipline your kids and to "stick" with it, especially when they get older. We now have a teenage daughter, the Princess, whom is 13 and a preteen, the Bookworm, whom is 10 soon to be 11 in December. And yes, he is a preteen, I teach his 4th/5th Grade Sunday School Class and the Curriculum is tagged as Preteen! Yes, I know I almost fell off my rocker!

So, one night after the Hubby and I tucked the kids into bed, we were talking and catching up on our day and talking about how we could effectively nip sassy talk, back talk, eye rolling, and just plain attitude out of our kids but be able to be consistant at the same time. That's when we thought of making a "Consequence Jar".

I took an index card and wrote on it in Red Marker, Consequence Jar and taped it to an old Mason Jar. The next night at dinner during our family's devotion time, we told the kids that we were going to come up with a Family Vision for our family. All four of us participated in making it, we didn't think that it would be right not to involve the kids. So, that night our Family Vision was made, it is: To be a family that glorifies God by, showing love, respect and encouragement to one another, through JOY:Jesus, Others, Yourself.

After we set our Family Vision, we then decided on the Family Rules. We each took a turn naming what we thought would be a good family rule.
Here is our Family Rules:
1. Respect Each Other
2. No Whining
3. Encourage Each Other
4. Practice Makes Progress
5. No Lying, Always Tell The Truth
6. No Back-talking
7. Obey Your Parents
8. No Bad Words
9. Respect Your Body
10. Do Not Interrupt When Someone is Talking
11. Do Not Be Mean
12. Use Your Manners
13. Respect Other's Property
14. Take Pride in Yourself
15. No More Than 2 Hours of Computer/TV Per Day

These were then quickly typed out on the computer and printed along with our Family Vision and then posted in our home where we all four can see them everyday and refer back to them.

Next, we told the kids that we had a new way of solving back-talking, whining, etc. "The Consequence Jar". They were quit surprised when I pulled the mason jar out. We again took turns with Mom writing on index cards tasks/consequences that were to go in the jar.

For example here are some of their consequences: pull weeds out of garden, pull weeds out of flower beds, pick up pine cones in back yard, pick up sticks in back yard, fill up all bird feeders in yard, vaccum upstairs and stairs, vaccum all of down stairs, clean both toliets, sweep drive-way, etc. I think you get the idea. These are basically chores that neither of them like to do! And yes, they both have a chore chart with daily chores.

Once all consequences were written down, we folded the index cards in half and put them all in the jar. And that was it, our Famly Vision, Family Rules and Consequence Jar done as a family and all done in one night.

How does the Consequence Jar work, well when one back talks, we say go pull, and they go straight to the jar and pull a consequence and they immediately go and do it. We of course also talk with them about their behavior as well. We have found that this does work in our family and I recommend it to everyone. It is a topic of conversation in our home when guests and friends come over, because The Consequence Jar sits in plain view on our kitchen bar. They ask, what is The Consequence Jar? And we tell them pull a card..........then they say OHHHHH, this is a good idea!

Proverbs 22:6 "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it."