Friday, March 15, 2013

Surprises of the kinder variety

I never thought it would happen, but it has. Helicopters, aeroplanes, radio control cars, diggers and gliders have been all he ever talks about and all he ever wants to watch either on TV or the iPad, but now, Kien, my son, currently has a new obsession.



For the past few weeks I've seen him watching youtube videos of random people unwrapping these little surprises to reveal what is inside the pods inside the chocolate.





OMG, they are such painful clips to watch - worse than nails scratching a blackboard. But the boy has a bunch of them in his history links, and he freaks if he can't find them (and I have been so tempted to delete them all, believe me!).

But you know what? One great advantage of this new obsession is, firstly, they are $2.09 worth each, but more importantly, this:



That's a star chart if you couldn't work it out, and although it is fully covered by stickers and there are no stars on it that you can see doesn't mean Kien doesn't remember how many stars he has earned. At the moment 3 stars are worth 1 egg, and Kien can earn stars in various ways; going to the toilet before we leave the house, getting into the bath without any fuss, getting his shoes on and being ready to go out when I ask - that type of thing. This method has been working well for us, mainly because it has been easy for him to understand and easy for us to implement. "Do you want to earn a star? Yes/No." "How many stars have you got? Wow, you are so close to getting an egg." And when all fails and he is being a pain he gets a punishment, and then the talk afterwards goes something like, "did you enjoy your punishment? Wouldn't it be easier and better if you were good instead, and then you would have gotten a star".

Today I went to a different supermarket, all because I wanted to get him a different selection of surprises because the batch at our local isn't any good - such boring toys (not that Kien cares). Kien was so good tonight. He didn't fight to get into the bath, he didn't fight because he didn't like his dinner, he didn't whine because of whatever he choses to whine about. So I asked him how many stars he had already, and he told me he already had 2 stars. I told him I was very happy with his behaviour and so I was giving him a star, so how many did he have now? He said 3, and then he said, "3 means I get an egg! I'll get an egg the next time we go to the shop". Then I revealed the egg, and the look of delight and the smile on his face was beautiful. He was supposed to save his chocolate for tomorrow, but no chance of that despite his good intentions of putting it into a container and the fridge. The bi-flavoured chocolate shell was just to tempting.

1 comment:

Michelle MacWhirter said...

That is lovely! I remember kinder surprises from when I was young. Mum collected a lot of the toys, I collected a lot of calories hehe.

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