The Silver Peg

We've been using the chore board and ladder discipline system on and off for over three years now. I've discovered my kids won't follow the Daydo list, and the allowance system was too much to keep track of so we abandoned it, but the chore board and ladder has become a staple.

We fell away from the board for the better part of the last year while I tended our infant in and out of the hospital throughout multiple medical issues, but I've been increasingly disgusted with the messes everyone is leaving for me to clean. I decided this week to revamp the board.

It needs to be replaced, torn up from one of my kiddos who purposely destroys it with his peg when he's unhappy about moving down the ladder, but it's good enough to start back on.

I got new pegs to replace the missing ones, making sure I had enough different colors for each kid, and decided to use the All Boys, All Girls, and Everyone pegs much less, changing out some of their neutral colors. I set the board, conscious I couldn't assign everything that needed to be done. Then I took off the obsolete pegs except one, the silver peg that was left from the former Everyone color. I set the ladder, then called everyone over to view the board and ladder reinstatement.

A few whined they were down the ladder, but I reminded them of their recent behavior and failure to do their verbally assigned chores.

"How can I go up the ladder, then?" they whined.

"By doing all your chores on time." I answered.

"But how else can I go up the ladder?"

I realized that by doing only set chores, it would take a few days for them to get up the ladder. They realized it too, and it was making them already discouraged. I looked at the board, remembering an article I'd read a week before about one family who assigned value to chores to earn shiny marbles and how their kids scrambled to do them. The silver peg shined back at me. I got an idea.

I took the silver peg and plugged it into Clean Litter Box, something only one of my older kids has done a handful of times. I wanted to see if the silver peg was enough of a lure. If any of them would clean the litter box, I knew it would work longterm.

The kids looked at it and said, "What's that for?"

I replied, "Anyone who does a silver peg chore, gets to go up the ladder."

To my shock, my seven-year-old son ran to retrieve a bag and the litter box scoop and began doing it while the others were still staring at the peg. Then the eight-almost-nine-year-old joined him to help sweep litter off the floor. Both went up the ladder one.

"What's the next silver peg chore?" they asked. Bags of backed up unfolded laundry came to mind, so I set the silver peg on Fold Clothes.

This time the ten-year-old joined them and folded the multiple loads of laundry. Then it was on Clean Garbage Can, then Clean Bathroom, then Vacuum. The oldest, 15-year-old IJ, who at first scoffed over the whole thing, saw how well they were going up the ladder and how he couldn't play video games because he was too far down. He picked up the vacuum cleaner and vacuumed the living room. Then he put it down to leave more vacuuming for someone else. By then, I'd found another silver peg and had plugged it into Clean Microwave. So he went and cleaned the microwave.

I was amazed. I am still amazed. I hadn't realized it, but our chore board had been missing an important component to make it really work: extra incentive. Now perhaps our board will go from being a good acquaintance to being our best friend. Thank you, Silver Peg.

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Tech Tags: chores discipline system kids parenting household

Five Years Ago Today

Five years ago today, Jim was putting up house trusses and I made the first of my blog posts here at The Building Brows. If you had told me then that we would not be in our house yet five years out, I wouldn't have believed it. Since then, many things have transpired.

We've:

• Birthed two children bringing our total to seven children
  
• Built two additions onto our mobile home to accommodate our growing family
• Had farm animals & given them away
• Been adopted by a wonderful cat who had kittens then died
  
• Leveled land
• Cleared forest
• Gone from worker to business owner
• Built a business workshop
• Endured the passage of puberty and entry into teendom with our first child.
• And now we parent a child with a rare chromosome disorder who has required much.
  

Life is drastically different than five years ago. I'd like to think we're wiser and better, but I prefer not to be delusional or a fool.

Five years ago we began this venture to build our house without loans, not because we were prideful or arrogant, but because we knew the worker-roofer income did not support a year-round loan. We suffered ridicule and threats to report us to child services by "well-meaning" readers who insisted we neglected our children because we refused to provide bigger and better for our kids on their time frame.

Five years ago we couldn't see a recession coming, we only knew we needed to follow what God was telling us to do. Now that the recession is here and many are suffering great loss, I find us stable, no different than we've been these past five years except that we're in better position to finish our house now that Jim owns the business he used to work for.

Five years ago I would have run away if you asked me to stay here five years: I believed we'd be out of the mobile home by now. In five years from now, I don't think we'll be out. But I hope.

I welcome 2010, another year to build, living day by day in the moment with each moment a chance to start new.

Build well.

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Tech Tags: New Year anniversary family home house construction

Addendum/Correction: Extreme Makeover Home Edition

Extreme Makeover Home Edition taping prep-work in the hospital:

The hospital did not move in fake patients, what someone on the floor had said to me. They actually cleared out that side in a "musical patients" afternoon and left the emptied rooms with curtains drawn and doors closed for the taping. This was so us patients and our families were as undisturbed as possible--except for the musical patients bit. The hospital did a fabulous job cleaning and preparing for the crew under short notice. And at the end of the last visit the next day, co-host Paige signed Jaeli's signature-filled CHaD bag.

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Tech Tags: CHaD Children's Hospital at Dartmouth Extreme Makeover Home Edition family home house construction

Irony: Extreme Makeover Home Edition

As I sit in Jaeli’s hospital room at Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth (CHaD) in Lebanon, New Hampshire, admittance for what turned out to be a urinary tract infection, listening to housekeeping paint scraped walls and clean the carpet in my pod, a strange mixture of emotions swirls inside. Not from the cleaning—I wish they’d come clean my home—but from their reason for the extensive and sudden spring cleaning: Extreme Makeover Home Edition is coming to tape a family in my pod tomorrow.

Of course Jaeli will be moved to another section of the CHaD pedi floor away from the taping so fake patients can move in to fill the other rooms in our pod for show, and perhaps so Jaeli’s cries won’t disturb the taping, but I sit here astonished.

We’ve now spent four to five difficult, cramped years in our 800 square feet, now 900 since Jaeli’s been born and Jim added a room in literally four days to accommodate her special needs. During those times, we’ve flirted with applying for the home makeover show, but after reading the contract, could not in good conscience sign it. (A former The Building Brows post details why.) Then our friend asked permission to nominate us, and I struggled to answer yes because of that contract, but I finally did because she had it so much in her heart to help my family. Yet it slid away into silence, for which, at the time, I was glad even though my family needs our house completed and we still can’t do it.

I made that decision with peace in my heart. It was right. But what are the odds that this show would come to the CHaD, and then, when we were here with Jaeli admitted? This aside from the odds of birthing beautiful Jaeli with a rare chromosome disorder to add to our family already living in a unique situation.

I’m really happy for the family here who is being tended by the show. It is a great, wonderful thing. On the flip side, this is very hard for me, knowing that contract stands in the way from receiving like help when my husband is doing all he can to care for our six other children while I care for Jaeli, and run a business that just three years ago didn’t exist, so we can get through the winter in our tiny home. This couldn’t be more in my face.

Why? What purpose does God have for this?

This is surely a test of some kind, but I’m not sure what subject I’m trying to pass and how I’ll make it through. Either way, today, tomorrow, and days after, I’m sure, will prove to be difficult emotionally for me as I face Jaeli being discharged at the end of the week to return home to our now 900 square feet in the woods for our family of nine.

One thing I know today lives strong and well: Irony.

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Tech Tags: CHaD Children's Hospital at Dartmouth Extreme Makeover Home Edition boiler plate contract rights application applicant family home house construction

Major Life Changes

It's been a long while since I've posted, but with good reason. We've been building something else these past several months with great difficulty. The Building Brows is now a family of nine.

Our little girl was born two weeks ago by C-section. I'm recovering well, but we haven't yet welcomed baby JR into our home because she's in the hospital with serious complications and is looking at heart surgery, probably sooner than later. If you pray, please pray for our little girl. If you'd like to learn more, please check out my Brandy Brow twitter page (updated far more often than our Building Brows twitter page.

In the meantime, while Jim and I have been at the hospital with JR, Jim's worker has been working on the house. I came home last week to find the outside papered. Shocked me! Jim's ordered vinyl siding and we're ever grateful for the excellent deal a local company gave us on the order. We're not sure where all the money will come from, but Jim's guy needed a paycheck so that was the way to give it to him.

I don't know what the days or weeks ahead will bring, but I am confident God is in control.

I hope you'll take some time today to stop and count your blessings. The next time your kids run up and down the hall, about to drive you over the edge, thank God they have stamina and breath to run and that you can hug and hold them. So many moms and dads right now in neonatal intensive care nurseries everywhere don't have that luxury. Some can't even hold their babies because their health is too fragile. We all have great things to be thankful for; let's hope we can see and be thankful for them while we can.

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Tech Tags: baby, babies, heart, heart surgery, surgery, hospital, newborn, house, blessings, God, Twitter