Prime Parenting

I have 3 teenagers. Those are fun. You should get a few if you want to be frustrated all the time, or you generally appreciate really tall toddlers.

ANYway, they're all also autistic, so they need visual aids and lots of reminders. I made some chore/Rule charts. Did I forget anything vital, other than felonies are bad?

 

When's bathtime? Brushing your teeth? Complimenting each other? Developing emotional maturity? Also, when you say "draw something" this means don't draw on the walls, floor, doors or ceiling! Perhaps set your lights and TVs on a timer to switch off at the respected times. Robot cleaners are fun, some even have mops in them! Is there a garden to do as well?

 

Unfortunately, no garden. We live in the tiniest of apartments, like sardines. The skills you describe aren't chores; they're part of our integrated therapy and skill building sessions with licensed practitioners. So, being done, but separate.

 

Maybe in terms of a consequence of not doing chores, take away screen time privileges equivalent to the time it would generally take to complete that chore. Probably more effective in the long term.

 

I don't hate that idea, it just doesn't seem concrete, which will make it hard to enforce. The problem being the amount of time it takes them varies from day to day because of their special needs.

 

So standardise the screen time they can earn and lose. Our children can earn 30 minutes for changing into their pj's and another 30 minutes for brushing their own teeth (they're 5 and 7). So a total of 1 hour screen time per day to be earned, means a maximum of 1 hour of screen time to be lost each day. This way you can also reward them for doing their chores instead of there only being a stick of consequences.

Although granted, don't know how this works for truly special needs kids. Ours are 'only' extremely intelligent, which is not the advantage people think it is.

 

Smart children are infinitely harder than "normal" children