Lauren Faith: buying her first toy

It has been a rough transition for the kids moving to our new house. They were such great sleepers before and now it has been really horrible trying to get anyone to sleep and to sleep through the night. Lauren immediately made a habit of sleeping in our bed and when she wasn't in our bed, she was having accidents and waking up several times a night. I thought it would get better as she got more comfortable with her room. We even got her a new night light (after she insisted on sleeping with all the lights on for a week) and she kept mentioning ghosts and lions that would come and get her at night.... and then there was Colson....

So I decided to try to give Lauren a goal... one day while we were shopping at HEB (with their clever product placements) Lauren found a bath toy (2 princess scrubbies and some bath wash) that she really, really wanted. Instead of buying it for her, or just telling her no, I told her she could earn it. The toy was $5.99 so she had to have 6 nights of sleeping in her bed all night with no accidents. She was so excited that she was going to earn money and after the first night of success she was hooked. It actually took her 10 days to earn the $6 because of an accident or two at night and then a day where she peed on the carpet and I charged her $1 to clean it up. So today she had $6 and I told her I would take her to the store for the toy.

We ended up at a different HEB and the toys were different, but she was very open to buying something else and chose a Barbie with a pet dog (for $5). She did want the Barbie horse (for $10) and is currently working on saving her money for that!

She is doing much better sleeping now and it is so worth the $1 every morning to get my sleep and not change sheets! I know I won't have to do this forever- Lauren is very adaptable and open to rules changing. She does like to earn things though and the positive reinforcement is working great!

Lauren counting her dollars