My kids don’t care about getting grounded or put in time-out. Docking their allowance got them to improve their behavior.

The author started docking her kids’ allowance and saw improvements in their behavior. 

As a mom to two boys who are only getting rowdier with age, I often repeat myself.

“Don’t touch each other.”

“Are you allowed to do that?”

“Is that appropriate?”

These are all things I say or ask multiple times a day, for behaviors they know are unacceptable: calling names, arguing, and standing on my antique trunk for the 4,000th time when that has never been allowed. It’s as if they have cotton in their ears.

They are 7 and 5 and full of young boy behaviors, like not keeping their hands to themselves, loudness, constant messes, and more.

As they’ve gotten older and more ornery, my husband and I have had to get more creative with our parenting methods.

We dock our kids’ allowance to get them to behave

The one move we have started seeing improvement upon is docking allowance. In $.50 increments, I’ll pull funds from their weekly allowance. Fighting? Not listening? “Minus $.50! Minus $1!” No one has lost more than $1.50 in a single day because, for them, this method is enough of a deterrent.

There’s something about the immediate disappointment of knowing you lost money and also not getting the full allowance later. It’s the one-two punch that makes the rules stick. (Then, if your brother got his full allowance and you didn’t? Even more heartbreak.)

When they lose funds, I write it down or text my husband, who oversees their allowance each Friday. They do have the chance to earn money back with additional chores. Picking up after themselves, listening, getting themselves ready to leave the house, and doing certain chores — those things are all expected and do not count toward earning power. That’s what earns their regular allowance. However, anything they lost can be re-earned if they do additional chores.

Their base starts at $5 each week, and they can add to that whether or not they have been docked. This is also their spending money; they get to spend every cent while we handle savings behind the scenes; they know it exists but don’t have much interest otherwise.

We started docking our allowance because time-outs and grounding them didn’t work

We decided to start docking their allowance when we reached a point where what we’d been doing was no longer working.

For one thing, whenever their dad tells them to do something, they tend to listen more than when I’m giving the instructions. But of course, their dad’s not always home, and I need to handle a lot of the parenting on my own. I am, after all, the primary caregiver, and their behavior (or lack thereof) is a direct reflection of me.

Grounding them worked, sometimes. The problem with it is that the punishment isn’t immediate. And honestly, sometimes it’s more of a grounding for me. I have to remember what they’re restricted from doing, and then also remember to enforce it. When I’m already running on mental fumes, this is not ideal. To be fair, they are honest and will remind me what they are grounded from, but it’s still something to remember.

Timeouts happen in the moment, but once it’s over, their mood is unlikely to have changed. More often than not they went on to continue bickering or break another rule with their poor mood.

Docking our kids’ allowance is fast and effective, and I can do it without raising my voice. We’ve been following this parenting tactic for the last several months and plan to continue it as long as it encourages good behavior with our kids.