THE TRACKER

Ken and Coppelia have come up with a new work incentive for their family.  Here's an explanation in Ken's own words.

A beautiful family picture recently taken (2012)

This might be a fun blog post.

Having a lot of kids in a house brings a lot of fun, but it also brings a lot of messes not to mention that keeping a house in some semblance of organization gets to be a challenge. Of course, this is nothing new and parents have used some form of "chores" for generations. Then there is the other side of the child income statement known frequently as "allowance." Kids want to buy stuff and parents want kids to be responsible. This creates a dilemma where the older kid will go and get a job. Now they have money, but the parent often looses they're best helper. Its not like the teenager is going to come home and say "hey Dad I just made $200 at my job, here's $100 for me not being around the house as much to help." Can't see that happening. It certainly didn't happen when I was a kid. 

We've been working through this issue for years now, but I had an idea that technology could provide a solution. My kids are pretty computer savvy and having worked with spreadsheets and knowing that all my older kids could get access to google docs I came up with the Task Tracker. Its been in place for about a month and frankly I love it. It rewards those that want to work hard and teaches basic, but fundamentally economic principles of economics. 

Here is how it works essentially:

Every week, there are a list of tasks that parents want completed. The tasks are given values for their completion. Some tasks are basic like empty the dishwasher or deep clean a bathroom, but others are more involved like paint the fence. We have some limits on who can do what (JP might not be ready to paint yet), but for the most part each older kid can pick their tasks. We increase tasks values by the week depending on whether they're popular or how badly we want them done. Right now windows is valued at 5 points PER WINDOW (up from 2 points a few weeks ago). Finally, it has a taker (thanks Aria). We assign a baseline of points that each kid must complete per week based on their perceived capacity. That gets adjusted for events (I.e., Davis and Steven were gone on a 50 mile hike last week and that pretty much nullified them). The industrious kid (and we've got those) can plow into tasks and earn task dollars, which in our case actually mean real dollars, but if I had younger kids, I would probably have said that 10 task dollars equals a date with Mommy or Daddy or something like that. Now, I don't have to worry about allowances. I say to my kids if they want to buy something go earn it. Obviously, this leaves them the option of getting a real job, but then they still have their baseline to complete. 

We add tasks to the board and remove tasks to the board, adjust points as needed and keep track of earnings. This would be a pain, but a google doc makes it much easier. This google doc is their spreadsheet that is excel light, but has a lot of sound features. Best of all, its fully accessible by anyone that you invite. So, each kid can access and update their scores as tasks are completed. They have a Dad who is pretty good about checking on their work and adjusting point value up and down for excellence of work performed. This makes doing tasks a bit more fun I think. Plus they can see their "Bank" increasing as they do more. Mom and Dad get the option of adding items that they want to see done by simply increasing the value and decreasing the tasks that get picked all the time. We have about 50 tasks on our board right now. Some are interesting. We divide into indoor, outdoor and special tasks. Steven has a task to learn a new hymn that earns him 4 points at 1 hour of learning. Kitty box cleaning is a 2 point task (Dad doesn't like dirty kitty boxes). Mayra finishing the painting of the Christmas Train is 40 points. Replacing all of the dead lights in the house earns an amazing 10 points. Cut wood for 30 mintues is earning an amazing 15 points (but only Davis is authorized). 

(I tried to enlarge some of it so it is readable. Sort of)

We like it. Besides its free and accessible on smart phones, Ipads, computers, etc. There are other developed Aps out there, but I like the simplicity of my tool and its something that I think most any kid (even JP) can use and any parent can use. Thought you'd enjoy. If you want to use something like this, let me know.  Ken.