Gold Nuggets

One afternoon, I had the opportunity to hear Renee Swope speak at Hope Presbyterian Church.  She is an author with Proverbs 31 Ministries, and she is a mom who loves to encourage other moms.  I bought her book/chart called Mining for Gold in the Heart of Your Child.  I love it!  

She talks about how children have gold hidden in their hearts waiting to be discovered by their parents. And the more gold we dig for, the more we will find.  Renee developed a chart with golden attitudes and actions and paired each with nuggets of truth,  or Scripture.  

The goal is to talk to your child about good character traits, and then reward them when you see your child displaying one.  Many of the golden attitudes that are in the chart are ones that James will have to be a little older to completely grasp.  But we are working on the ones that fit his age best right now.... Being Helpful, Showing Kindness, Being Obedient, Sharing, and Being Thankful.  

I took Renee's idea and literally made "gold nuggets" for my rewards for James.  One afternoon, James and I went to the Big H (Meme and Papa's house) and collected a jar full of rocks.  We took them home and spray painted them gold.  James LOVED them!  So each time James demonstrates a golden attitude, we reward him with a gold nugget.  When he fills up his jar, he gets to pick out something or do something special.  Hopefully we can keep this up!  So far it's worked very well.  It keeps me focused on Biblical training.  And it keeps James excited about having good behavior.  Sometimes when we are having a bad day, we just start focusing on the small good things James does, and THAT gets him going in the right direction and makes the day go smoother!

Once he filled up his jar, his asked for his reward to be "go get a blue doughnut and eat it on the railroad track".  And that's just what we did!  haha.

Recently he has loved getting vehicles, such as this train....

and this ice cream truck.  I have been going to CVS and using some of my extra bucks to help make these little bit pricier purchases.  I might be encouraging more doughnuts soon!  

And recently, Reese has really wanted to participate, so I thought, it's never too early to start!  We have gone more "girly" with her.  She gets what we call "Warm and Fuzzies!"

But same idea :)