Token Economy

We did not have the best of weekends starting out with Thing 1. I had previously written about my concern with him at daycare due to him deliberately pooping in his pants on Friday. Well, he deliberately peed in his pants on Saturday and had pooped in his pants twice Saturday morning. By this time, I put a pull-up on him as I wasn’t about to go through a third pair of underwear. After the last incident, I told Thing 1 that if he does not poop or pee in his pants for the rest of the weekend, he would get a special dessert on Sunday after dinner and we would put a token in his bowl (more on that in a minute). This seemed to work well. We also came to find out that Thing 1 was have a little difficulty going potty – probably because of too much cheese this past week. We decided to lay off the cheese and to give him some prune juice along with his regular daily dose of fiber. By late Sunday morning, Thing 1 had successfully pooped in the potty, was feeling much better, and had his special dessert.

Also on Friday and Saturday, Thing 1’s behavior was horrendous. He was not listening, throwing things, and just being a royal pain. After he got up from his nap on Saturday, I enlisted the token economy. We had these gold pirate coins that Thing 1 likes to play with so I told him that he could earn one of these coins for being good and that we would put them in a plastic bowl on a shelf in the living room. He was given rules on what was considered being good and what was being bad. He seemed to understand and we started earning coins right away. He earned one coin Saturday evening and 3 coins on Sunday but lost one on Sunday because of not listening. He has been told that if he is on the green at school (they use a stop light to show how good their behavior is at school – green means no time outs, yellow means one time out, and red means a challenging day) then he will get another coin. At the end of the week, he will then get a special prize based on how many coins he has earned. We are not yet sure what the prize will be but it may just be to spend quality time with mom or dad by himself doing an activity that he enjoys. The token economy is working so far. We shall see what today brings.