Several months ago, I was really struggling with knowing how to discipline Axton. It was getting to the point where I felt like I was just pulling things out of thin air just to make him feel like he was receiving an actual punishment. My “go-to” punishment was to take shows away for the day, but as soon as I used that up, then I was left with not much else to work with! Plus, taking shows away from Axton also means taking a break away from me 🙂 Both Adam and I agreed we were also yelling too much with little results.

For a few days, I took a step back and pondered on what kind of discipline techniques I believed in, or felt good about. I wanted to teach Axton that good behavior brought about good consequences, increased trust in him, and special privileges – and that poor behavior meant a loss of those privileges. I finally came up with the idea of him earning buttons for good deeds he’d done that day. At first, I gave him small rewards he could then “cash in” his buttons for – a certain amount for a show or games on the iPad. Then one day I briefly mentioned he could save up a large amount and use it to go see a movie or go out for ice cream. Axton immediately hopped on this idea, and no interest in using his buttons on smaller prizes. He had his eyes set on the big picture. He even decided he was going to save up for ice cream AND a movie at the same time, even though this took him almost twice as long.

I was a little unsure of how this would work, and worried that it would take Axton so long to earn that many buttons that he would get bored, lose interest, and go back to misbehaving or not caring about if he lost a button for poor decisions made. And while we did go through short periods of that happening from time to time, I found that the way to fix it – the way to keep his interest – was to start rewarding him for smaller things, until he was excited again.

A few friends asked if I had certain rules to the way I did this – if there was a cap on how many buttons he could earn in one day, for example. But really, I just kept it loose and gauged how Axton was responding to it that week. I loved being flexible with it. One day I would reward him for simply saying “Okay Mommy” to me telling him he couldn’t do something (instead of his usual scream of NO! or But whyyyyyyy) and the next day he would have to sweep the kitchen or fold laundry with me to earn a button. I loved rewarding him for the small, unexpected things – like reading a book nicely with Rhenner or willingly sharing a toy before I asked him to. I found that I loved looking for reasons to give him a button – I loved looking for the positive in Axton, rather than punishing the negative. I wasn’t perfect at this, of course, but both Adam and I found that if Axton wasn’t responding to the Button Jar, it was because we had been too busy taking away buttons lately and we needed to start building him back up again.

And yes, Axton did finally earn his movie AND ice cream. He was so excited, and we were so happy to explain to him that he had earned a special treat because of his good behavior! We love this system right now, and I especially love that instead of  yelling, I can calmly say, “I’m going to have to take a button away for that decision,” and the effect is far greater.

Here he is, so thrilled to be seeing a movie on the BIG SCREEN: