Product Review: Responsibility Chart by Melissa & Doug

I got this “Magnetic Responsibility Chart” from a friend who hasn’t been using it for a while. We hung it in my son’s room as a continuation of the actions we’ve taken along with “House Rules Poster“. It has magnets for every “desired behavior” such as helping with house chores and communicating with each other etc. You put the desired behaviors or actions on the top board. All the other magnets at the bottom. Then each day when child(ren) behaves well, you put “reward” magnets for that day.

In theory, it’s a wonderful tool to help children control their behaviors, do something or not do something. But in practice, it’s not that easy. Even when you “promise a tangible reward” other than the rewards magnets themselves, the self-control requires much more work than knowing you’ll be evaluated at the end of the day. Especially, at younger ages such as 4-5. So instead of ignoring his good behavior during the day for a single incident – because there is an incident every single day no matter what – I monitor him and put a reward magnet when he does something nice. I acknowledge the good deed.

In some case, we use the board as a “warning”. Or in some rare instances, we remove the “reward” magnet. The whole learning to self-control process takes a long time. I am not expecting overnight miracles.

With these pros and cons, overall I like to use this magnetic responsibility chart by Melissa & Doug. The good habits and chores we’ve selected are:

• Sharing
• Being nice
• Not hitting
• Speaking nicely
• Cleaning up the toys
• Cleaning up the table
• Brushing the teeth

There are many other options to select from such as putting toys away and sharing. We focused on the behavior we wanted to work on. You can use the bottom board to keep the extra magnets or as a whiteboard.

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