The House Fairy

Doug's cousin told us about an online program to help your children learn to do things around the house to build lasting habits.  The house fairy is Santa's sister and she reports back to Santa if your child has been keeping their rooms clean or other chores around the house.  There are videos that your child can view about cleaning their room, setting the table, manners, etc.  The package provides letters from the House Fairy, letterhead to write your own letters, reward suggestions, suggestions on age appropriate chores, ways to set up the room so the child can keep it clean, etc.  I had quickly viewed the website last week, but did not have the time to really look at it.  Now, typically I want Elijah to do things out of obedience not for the reward, but I also think rewarding a good behavior is beneficial.  We try to do positive parenting where we reward the good stuff.  Getting Elijah to pick up after himself has been a nightmare to put it lightly.  He typically cries and whines and wants help and it takes forever to get the job done.  I have resorted to waiting it out and then doing a massive cleaning and daring him to mess it up again, only for him to gradually make the mess again and then the whining and crying start all over.  I am totally fed up with it.  I am so ready to throw away all of his belongings.  So, Doug and I have been talking about starting chores with an allowance to go with it and to incorporate tithing with it.  When Donna sent us this information, it looked too good to be true.  We had decided to give it a try, so today I was looking at the site in more depth and did not hear Elijah get up from his rest time.  He came into the study as I was watching the intro video for the kids(thank goodness I was there and not on the parent video!).  I restarted the video and sat Elijah in my lap.  As he watched the video his eyes got wide.  The House Fairy challenged him to go to his room and pick up 5 items and then tell his parents and have them make an appointment with her.  He jumped out of my lap and ran upstairs to his room.  He then came and got me and showed me the 5 items he had put away.  I praised him and told him I would talk to daddy about it when he got home.  I continued cleaning the kitchen and he went back to his room.  Later he came and got me to show me he had cleaned up his entire room(at least a very good effort at it.  I was amazed that he could do it to be honest!).  He was so motivated.  He showed Doug as soon as he got home.  Tonight as we were putting him to bed he asked about the House Fairy and we told him we would contact her.  I just went online and ordered the package.  It takes 24 hours to get access.  Elijah came down a few minutes later and wanted to know if we had made the appointment with the House Fairy.  Crude.  What am I going to do?  I told him she was not available and we were waiting on her to return her message.  I hope it does not take 24 hours.  I want to move on this while the anticipation is high!!!!  I bought some fairy dust today and found some gold coin candy at Walgreens for 75% off since they were in the Christmas stuff.  I may just leave some fairy dust(glitter) and some candy coins and a note that the House Fairy will be getting with Mommy and Daddy to start the inspections.  If he does not do what he is suppose to do you just leave some fairy dust and no reward so they know the House Fairy came and knows they left their chores undone.  Guess that means you go on Santa's naughty list.  Hmmm, this just might work, at least long enough to form some positive habits!!!!