[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":163},["ShallowReactive",2],{"blog-en-three-boys-sticky-notes-and-a-deal":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"author":6,"body":7,"date":154,"description":155,"extension":156,"meta":157,"navigation":158,"path":159,"seo":160,"stem":161,"__hash__":162},"blog/blog/en/three-boys-sticky-notes-and-a-deal.md","Three Boys, Sticky Notes, and a Deal That Changed Everything","Hanna Y.",{"type":8,"value":9,"toc":144},"minimark",[10,14,17,22,25,37,40,44,47,50,53,57,60,63,66,70,73,92,103,106,110,113,116,122,125,129,132,135,138],[11,12,13],"p",{},"We have three boys. Each of them is confident, opinionated, and — in the best possible interpretation of the word — strong-willed. In theory, those are excellent qualities for future leaders. At 6pm on a Tuesday when homework isn't done, shoes are scattered across the hallway, and nobody wants to go to judo practice, the theory is harder to appreciate.",[11,15,16],{},"For a while, we just lived in the chaos. Nagging worked sometimes. Bribing worked rarely. Losing our patience worked never.",[18,19,21],"h2",{"id":20},"three-future-leaders-one-kitchen-table","Three future leaders, one kitchen table",[11,23,24],{},"At some point we stopped trying to overpower the situation and started trying to negotiate it. Motivating kids isn't exactly our strongest suit — we're both in tech, which means evenings are usually split between laptops and laundry. With two IT careers, three school schedules, four countries in three years, and the background noise of war, we needed something honest and low-overhead. We just sat the boys down and made a deal.",[11,26,27,28,32,33,36],{},"The rules were simple: ",[29,30,31],"strong",{},"pluses"," for things done right, ",[29,34,35],{},"minuses"," for things that weren't. Homework finished without being asked? Plus. Helped set the table? Plus. Good mark at school? Plus. Skipped a chore, argued about going to judo, brought home a bad grade without trying? Minus.",[11,38,39],{},"At the end of the week, we'd sit down together and count. The more pluses a kid had earned, the bigger the praise — or sometimes a small reward. A quiet competition started forming between the three of them, each keeping an eye on where his brothers stood. Whether encouraging that rivalry was the right call, we're honestly still not sure. But it mattered to them.",[18,41,43],{"id":42},"notes-app-for-us-stickers-for-them","Notes app for us, stickers for them",[11,45,46],{},"We tracked everything in the Notes app on an iPhone — running totals, the master log. But the boys needed something physical, something they could see and count themselves.",[11,48,49],{},"Every week, four fresh sticky notes went up on the fridge. Three of them — one per kid — had pluses and minuses written in pen as the week went on. The fourth was the summary: last week's total and the all-time running balance for each of them. The boys could walk up to the fridge at any point and add up their own score. They did, often.",[11,51,52],{},"Sometimes they'd dispute whether something counted as a plus or a minus, which led to some genuinely interesting conversations about fairness and effort.",[18,54,56],{"id":55},"what-surprised-us","What surprised us",[11,58,59],{},"It worked.",[11,61,62],{},"Not immediately, and not perfectly. But within a few weeks, something shifted. The kids became more aware of their own behavior — not because we were watching, but because they were watching themselves. We'd catch one of them redirecting before a minus happened. Homework got done with less arguing. Getting ready for sports practice quietly turned into something worth noting.",[11,64,65],{},"School results improved too. Not dramatically, but noticeably. Effort and outcome were connected now — and it was visible.",[18,67,69],{"id":68},"when-they-started-gaming-it","When they started gaming it",[11,71,72],{},"At some point the boys figured out that chores could offset bad marks at school. Do enough dishes, stay in the green. We noticed. So we adjusted.",[11,74,75,76,79,80,83,84,87,88,91],{},"School grades got coefficients. A: ",[29,77,78],{},"+4",". B: ",[29,81,82],{},"+2",". C: ",[29,85,86],{},"0",". D and lower: ",[29,89,90],{},"−4",". And the type of assessment had a multiplier — a daily mark was ×1, a quiz ×1.5, a test ×2.",[11,93,94,95,98,99,102],{},"Which meant an A on a test was ",[29,96,97],{},"+8",". And a D on a test was ",[29,100,101],{},"−8"," — not something you could wash away by tidying your room.",[11,104,105],{},"The boys weren't thrilled. But the point got across: no amount of good chore behavior fully compensates for not trying at school. We never set that as a rule — they discovered it through the numbers.",[18,107,109],{"id":108},"how-many-pluses-for-a-lego-set","\"How many pluses for a LEGO® set?\"",[11,111,112],{},"At some point one of the boys came and asked exactly that. They'd figured out that the pluses had value — real value, tied to things they actually wanted. So they started asking: what does a new game cost? What about a trip somewhere?",[11,114,115],{},"We'd give them a number. And then they'd work toward it.",[11,117,118,119,121],{},"Once the school coefficients were in place, the fastest way to earn was obvious: an A on a test was worth ",[29,120,97],{}," in one go. No amount of chores could match that kind of return. The boys knew this. And their attitude toward studying shifted — not because we pushed, but because the numbers made the case for us.",[11,123,124],{},"Chores still counted. The daily steady drip of pluses added up over weeks. But the big wins came from school, and they knew it.",[18,126,128],{"id":127},"what-the-books-actually-say","What the books actually say",[11,130,131],{},"I read a lot of them — parental leave gave me time for that. The good ones do a solid job of naming the problem: why kids disengage, why nagging doesn't work, why punishment backfires. But for all that depth, almost none of them tell you specifically what to do. The advice tends to converge on one thing: talk to your kids like adults. Explain the why. Make them part of the solution.",[11,133,134],{},"So we did. We sat the boys down, laid out the problem — we needed more responsibility from them, and there had to be a real connection between effort and reward — and asked them to help figure out the rules. The system we ended up with was the result of that conversation.",[136,137],"hr",{},[11,139,140],{},[141,142,143],"em",{},"PraiseMe grew out of that system. Same idea, less paper.",{"title":145,"searchDepth":146,"depth":146,"links":147},"",2,[148,149,150,151,152,153],{"id":20,"depth":146,"text":21},{"id":42,"depth":146,"text":43},{"id":55,"depth":146,"text":56},{"id":68,"depth":146,"text":69},{"id":108,"depth":146,"text":109},{"id":127,"depth":146,"text":128},"2026-06-15","Three boys, three opinions, and zero leverage. The parenting books all said the same thing: talk to them like adults. Here's what happened when we actually did.","md",{},true,"/blog/en/three-boys-sticky-notes-and-a-deal",{"title":5,"description":155},"blog/en/three-boys-sticky-notes-and-a-deal","aj53ope_NtoW9B_sf2Shll0zB4_DwT7UD_zXhyoDOFQ",1784480701319]