Congratulations! We’ve survived the holidays! If you’re like us, perhaps your family tends to lose a few marbles around this time of year and when the kids return to school, you, too, are DESPERATE to find ways to get those marbles back. 
I find that this year I am searching for more than my lost mental marbles due to a wild Christmas morning with stocking stuffers gone crazy. Boys. 
This year, I am once again resolving to do a better job at encouraging my kids instead of just being on their case all the time. I want to give them something to look forward to besides avoiding their mother’s constant querying of “Did you clean your room? Make your bed? Put the toilet seat down? Do your homework?” I want to find creative (but simple and affordable) ways to positively encourage my boys and reward them for “good” behavior and character. If you’re interested in joining me on this journey, say hello to the “The Marble Jar.” I admit, it’s not really my idea. I pretty much stole it from Ms. Neel, one of my son’s teachers. (It’s okay. I didn’t steal the jar, just the idea. 
) She uses the idea to reward positive behavior with the kids in her class and my son, Shaun, LOVES it. He came home after a few weeks of school and told me all about it. We put our own little spin on it and so far it’s working surprisingly well. In my own efforts to focus on continuing the positive behavior reinforcement factor in my house, I’m sharing it with you!
All you need is a jar or small vase, a bag or two of marbles, and an idea for a reward when the jar is full. The basic idea is every time you “catch” your child(ren) doing good or showing good character, you put a marble in the Marble Jar. We’ve made this a family thing in our house. Any time one of us “catches” someone doing something positive or helpful or showing good character, they take a marble from the bag and put it in our Marble Jar. We have two goals for our Marble Jar – one for when it is half full and one for when it is completely full. When the jar is half full, the boys decide if we’re going to go with that goal (family movie night) or if we’re going to continue on to the full jar goal (Amazing Jake’s).
The Marble Jar idea is incredibly flexible. You can have a jar per person or like us, one jar for a whole family. You can have a big jar or a little jar, big marbles or little marbles or even rocks or pebbles, one goal or many goals along the way. Whatever you decide, you’ll be training yourselves to focus on positively encouraging one another and hopefully, promoting positive attitudes along the way.
I hope the Marble Jar is something that will help your family recover some lost marbles this year! Shaun says the marble jar “helps me remember to be nice and the best part about it is the family time we get when we reach a goal!” I’d love to hear your ideas and experiences with it!
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