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    The quarter deal

    September 18th, 2014

    S2 is SO into Lego. To the point he used up ALL his piggy bank on new Lego sets. I may have taken him to the store, where he lost his mind and decided he needed to go back every week-end. It was rough to watch him spend everything, but I had to let him. He was going through my money, so that had to stop and I needed him to realize that money wasn’t infinite, and until he used up his own, he wasn’t going to “get it”.

    That made for a really sad, little boy that was checking in on the state of his piggy bank account all the time. But money didn’t magically show up anymore. He had to earn it. We struck a deal. Be forewarned, I know it has the big potential to bite me in the ass, but it’s worth trying right now…

    In addition to being Lego obsessed, this dude is an extremely picky eater. There are probably no more than 20 food items this child will put in his mouth in total. Most of them are things you see at breakfast. I need him to expand his food dictionary, and the only way I’ve been successfully able to do that is through bribing him… with a quarter. So our deal is: he has to take a bite from every item on MY plate. At the end, if he does everything he qualifies for a quarter. He doesn’t have to like it, but he has to try it. Right now I’m still letting him spit some of the food back out. Hey — just getting it IN his mouth has been monumental, I’m going through baby steps. But pretty soon the ante is going to go to swallowing the bite, to a point where he’s going to eat what we eat. And it’s a quarter at a time. Sounds ridiculous, but it’s doing something.

    He’s discovered that my chicken is just like his chicken nuggets. Passable. So we already have one food item he’s willing to consider. Most veggies are still a no-go, but hey work in progress.