PINK!

Alex has been doing an amazing job at school the past couple of weeks.  He has been landing on PINK most days; just like his friend SoAndSo, the greatest first grader to ever walk the land according to Alex.  SoAndSo can do no wrong.  Ever.  He is amazing and perfect in every way.  Did you know SoAndSo has the coolest Nerf Guns?  And he's super good at sports?  And he's like one of the smartest kids?  And he's funny?  And he lands on pink every day?  Did you know that?  I'm surprised you didn't because SoAndSo is that amazing.

Let's review...last year, pink was the worst you could do and red was the best for some ridiculous reason.  But, this year, things are reversed.  So now pink is the best and red is the worst.  And while this makes much more sense to me, it took an absurd amount of time for me to adjust.  Shocking, I know.  This year, it looks like this:



Anywho, so far this year we have battled about his behavior, and I have continually reminded him that it really isn't all that hard to land on at least green.  Green, you know...the color they start each day on.  Yeah, that one.  Just be nice and get your work done.  Just don't be an ass and you will be fine.  Over and over, day in and day out, this was the mantra spewing from my mouth.  Just be nice and get your work done.

We also base the amount of time he gets to play on the tablet around how his day goes.  For a very long time it was this:
Pink-30 mins
Purple-25 mins
Blue-20 mins
Green-15 mins
Yellow-5 mins
Orange-Ya lost it for a day
Red-You dun messed up and now you don't get a tablet for 4 days

So as long as he stuck with the baseline green, he got 15 minutes of table time a day.  Good good.  But then he started consistently ending his day on yellow.  And then the "it's too hard to land on green" stuff reemerged.  And that only took a couple of days to morph into "I still get 5 mins even if I land on yellow so it's not a big deal."



So that little shit decided 5 mins of tablet time, in conjunction with incessant complaining about how little time he got, was an acceptable way to go about this deal.  And yes, I realize I set it up that way and he decided he was ok with it, but that is not the point!  So I changed the deal.  And he was PISSED.

The new deal:
Pink-30 mins
Purple-25 mins
Blue-20  mins
Green-15 mins
Yellow-YOU GET NOTHING AND YOU WILL LIKE IT
Orange-Ya lost it for a day
Red-You dun messed up and now you don't get a tablet for 4 days

Oh man did he have some thoughts about this.  I wasn't being fair!  I can't just change the deal!  It's too hard to get green or higher!  I can't just change the deeeeeeeeeeeeeeal!!!!!!!!!!!

Too bad suckah.

Back to the past couple of weeks.  All of a sudden he was coming home landing on pink every day!  It was awesome!  He was so proud of himself and we were falling all over ourselves praising him.  He got to have Pizza Hut one night.  And he got to have a couple friends over for dinner the fourth night.  And so on.

Finally after about the 6th day on pink in a row, I asked him what changed to help him.  Completely matter of fact he told me, "Oh, SoAndSo in my class told me how to do it.  All I have to do is be nice and get my work done."  How nice of SoAndSo to share that bit of top secret information I clearly have been withholding.