How to Teach Your Kids Good Habits

Every Tuesday is Finance & Family Day at Zen Habits.

Every parent will commiserate with me, especially parents with a good number of kids (I have six): for awhile now I’ve been trying to teach my kids the habit of putting things back where they belong when they’re done with them. As you can imagine, it hasn’t exactly been a rousing success.

So I’ve been giving it some thought, and have hit on some new ideas. The main idea: turn it into a game.

I love creating charts, so I plan on making one that give points to each kid for putting stuff away. They get additional points for helping remind each other (I told them to help their siblings remember as an act of consideration). There will be treats for making a minimum number of points, so they can all win. This will be set up as a friendly challenge, not a cut-throat competition, where they can all help each other win. I don’t like to set up competitions for my kids where there are winners and losers, because the only lesson the losers learn is that they are losers. That’s not a lesson I’m teaching my kids.

Some tips on creating good habits with your kids:

Use the carrot, not the stick. I’ve tried punishment as a way of teaching them to remember things, and it not only doesn’t work, it’s no fun for anyone. Kids learn more about their faults than about the habits you’re trying to create. Use fun games or rewards instead, and plenty of praise. This is something I need to work more on.
Be their focus. I’ve written before about how maintaining focus on a goal is one of the main keys to sticking with it and actually accomplishing the goal. Well, kids have a hard time maintaining focus — you have to do it for them. Or better yet, teach them ways to keep that focus. You’ll have to remind them, post up visual reminders, and remind them some more.
Provide multiple means of motivation. I’ve written about my Top 20 Motivation Hacks, which work well for adults. They also work for kids. Provide not only one kind of motivation, but as many as you can. Rewards, praise, positive public pressure (tell not only the whole household about their goals but their grandparents and others), friendly competition, journals, charts and more can all be effective ways of creating motivation for your kids.
Try to be consistent for at least a month. After that it should get easier, but you’ll still need to provide motivation to keep it going. Consistency, in the beginning, is important in creating habits. There will be failures, sure, but learn from it and don’t drop the goal and then pick it up the next week. You need to maintain that focus consistently, so that they are constantly working on improving it (and having fun while doing so!).
Remember that kids aren’t perfect. They will make mistakes. They will fail. Do not put a tremendous amount of pressure on them to succeed. Gently help them along. Encourage them, but don’t criticize them. And remember that it could actually take months or even years before they learn some habits. Remember that you didn’t learn good habits overnight (and may still be trying to do so yourself). Don’t expect them to be better than you.
Join them. It would be even more fun if you all did the game together, if you had a joint goal of learning good habits. If the parents are part of the game, the learning process, the fun, the kids can learn from the parent’s example of how to set a goal, how to maintain focus, how to motivate yourself, how to reward yourself for doing well, and how to feel great about any accomplishment, no matter how small.
Celebrate often! Kids need positive feedback. If they do something good, no matter how small, celebrate like they just landed on the moon! Have fun, and show them that achieving goals can be a great feeling. Go out for a fun dinner, go to the park or beach, really reward them, especially in the beginning.

How to Teach Your Kids Good Habits

Every Tuesday is Finance & Family Day at Zen Habits.

So I’ve been giving it some thought, and have hit on some new ideas. The main idea: turn it into a game.

Some tips on creating good habits with your kids:

Use the carrot, not the stick. I’ve tried punishment as a way of teaching them to remember things, and it not only doesn’t work, it’s no fun for anyone. Kids learn more about their faults than about the habits you’re trying to create. Use fun games or rewards instead, and plenty of praise. This is something I need to work more on.
Be their focus. I’ve written before about how maintaining focus on a goal is one of the main keys to sticking with it and actually accomplishing the goal. Well, kids have a hard time maintaining focus — you have to do it for them. Or better yet, teach them ways to keep that focus. You’ll have to remind them, post up visual reminders, and remind them some more.
Provide multiple means of motivation. I’ve written about my Top 20 Motivation Hacks, which work well for adults. They also work for kids. Provide not only one kind of motivation, but as many as you can. Rewards, praise, positive public pressure (tell not only the whole household about their goals but their grandparents and others), friendly competition, journals, charts and more can all be effective ways of creating motivation for your kids.
Try to be consistent for at least a month. After that it should get easier, but you’ll still need to provide motivation to keep it going. Consistency, in the beginning, is important in creating habits. There will be failures, sure, but learn from it and don’t drop the goal and then pick it up the next week. You need to maintain that focus consistently, so that they are constantly working on improving it (and having fun while doing so!).
Remember that kids aren’t perfect. They will make mistakes. They will fail. Do not put a tremendous amount of pressure on them to succeed. Gently help them along. Encourage them, but don’t criticize them. And remember that it could actually take months or even years before they learn some habits. Remember that you didn’t learn good habits overnight (and may still be trying to do so yourself). Don’t expect them to be better than you.
Join them. It would be even more fun if you all did the game together, if you had a joint goal of learning good habits. If the parents are part of the game, the learning process, the fun, the kids can learn from the parent’s example of how to set a goal, how to maintain focus, how to motivate yourself, how to reward yourself for doing well, and how to feel great about any accomplishment, no matter how small.
Celebrate often! Kids need positive feedback. If they do something good, no matter how small, celebrate like they just landed on the moon! Have fun, and show them that achieving goals can be a great feeling. Go out for a fun dinner, go to the park or beach, really reward them, especially in the beginning.

Posted on 4 March 2007 in Finance & Family, Parenting |
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Comments (9)

chris Says:

March 5th, 2007, 4:25 am

As you mentioned the importance of praise for kids - please read http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/
“How not to talk to your kids”
to do it in the right way and to avoid undermining your good intentions with wrong language.

Johnnydcusa Says:

March 5th, 2007, 6:13 am

I agree with chris, this is the area I am working on with my kids; I think the article in the link has a very powerrful message for us all…..

Leo Says:

March 5th, 2007, 12:21 pm

Thanks Johnny and Chris, for the comment and the link.

jolene mitchell Says:

April 2nd, 2007, 7:21 am

could you please give me an idea of what type of table to make up for my daughter to award her points. She is an only child and im am finding it hard to get her to start doing things for herself shes 6 years and i still dress her in the morning i really want to get her out of this habbit!! thanks jolene

zenhabits Says:

April 2nd, 2007, 9:12 am

I find that star charts work well with kids … just a cool-looking calendar and a bunch of gold stars. Kids love getting those, especially around your daughter’s age. Try to show her that it’s a fun game, a challenge, and get her into the game. - leo

Janet C Says:

April 30th, 2007, 8:07 am

This chart idea does work! I used one with icons that are re-useable for my son, 7, who has a hard time with brushing his teeth.
The good idea though(b/c I’m not always consistent with it myself!), is to get a star chart for him for a variety of tasks we’re working on. Perhaps making one for myself too that he can give me stars for(when I do what I’m supposed to!!) will help..

IMChosen Says:

May 29th, 2007, 8:16 am

I’ve learned that with young kids it is easiest to change a small amt. of behaviors at one time by focusing on 1-3 behaviors we want to increase. Give different rewards for different levels of their participation (and Target’s dollar spot, or the dollar store, or local surplus/salvage stores have wonderful inexpensive treats for a treat basket). It will take about 6 weeks, and then you may be able to change the behaviors on the chart, as long as you are consistent with the child, keeping track on the chart or using a system to track the behaviors. I use a marble jar because my boys are hard to chatch with behaviors being out of control or changing so rapidly. Every time they do something you want them to do, put a marble in the jar and praise them. Set up a number of marbles for certain rewards. Chartjungle.com also has some wonderful charts that you can simply print out and they are very colorful, too.

brent Says:

June 18th, 2007, 2:14 am

we’ve got a drought here in australia - in summer it simply does not rain for 3 months of the year, and the temperature easily climbs above 35 degrees for weeks at a time.

I thought that it would be a total pain in the neck to keep a 3 yr old and a 1 yr old out from under my toes while I hauled out buckets of water from last night’s bath to the garden each night.

The weird thing was that they were absolutely excited by the idea! They each ended up with their own bucket - watching a 15 month old kid carrying a bucket of water through your [carpeted] lounge room is an exercise in positive thinking all by itself - and it turned out to be a really good Together Time. Instead of sitting inside sweltering in front of the telly before dinner we got outside, got a bit wet and were together while the sun went down. When winter came I was honestly sad to have to drop this particular chore!

Our routine was that I’d come home from work and we’d all hang out for a bit, then it would be Bucket Time!!! then it would be Dinner Time!!! then Bath Time!!! etc…

Heimdall Says:

December 9th, 2007, 8:00 am

I have recently discovered a free e-book entitled “Ten Things We Should Never Say To Kids” - http://thetinycompanycalledme.com/1573/25301.html (probably a good follow-up on Chris’ link?).

Admittedly I have not read every page of it yet, but some points sound quite interesting and noteworthy to me. While it emphasizes more what we should not do, your articles take an approach from the “positive angle”. Therefore I believe that both can complement each other very well! :-)

Thanks for the inspiration!