HOW TO USE AND GET THE MOST FROM GREAT-EFFORT REWARD CHARTS

Setting up a Great Effort reward chart is both simple and fun. There are step by step instructions and you and your child will be able to make choices in order to personalise the chart as much as possible. By involving your child in setting up their chart, it should encourage them to earn the tokens they have chosen.

The charts can be used for absolutely anything – there are a selection of the most common tasks and goals for you to choose from, or you can select ‘other’ and add one of your own. From the most obvious like potty training, eating vegetables, going to bed and helping with chores (for older children) to more specific goals such as progressing in swimming, telling the time, learning the alphabet or reading, online reward charts can be both motivating and fun. They can also be used for longer term objectives, for example, general good behaviour, encouraging good manners or doing well at school.

In addition to the more obvious tasks, Great Effort reward charts can also be used to support more specialised activities for children with special needs. Perhaps your child is striving towards walking or crawling with the help of their physiotherapist, or is working towards eating solids in order to have a feeding tube removed. Whatever their goal, Gus the Great Bear is here to help your child achieve it.

To see a demonstration of how to set up a reward chart and what this could look like, please click here .

In order to set up a reward chart for your child, you will need the following:

• Child’s details
• One parent’s details if you are not the child’s mother or father
• If you wish to include a photo of the child (this is optional), a downloadable version of the picture
• Details of the task
• Debit/credit card details (for information on charges, please visit the cost page of the website)

TIPS FOR GETTING THE MOST OUT OF THE REWARD CHARTS

To see the best results from the Great Effort reward charts, we recommend you consider the following points:

• Try to be specific in the goal you set your child.
• Set reasonable, realistic timescales.
• Award tokens daily and encourage your child to check their progress every day.
• Clearly discuss with your child how tokens can be earned.
• Encourage family members and friends to follow your child’s progress and refer to it during any contact with the child, for example during telephone conversations or by email.
• Encourage brothers and sisters to support each other by checking the other’s progress, but avoid any form of competition or pressure as it simply takes the fun away.

PLEASE NOTE: it is not possible to remove a reward token once it has been awarded as this is thought to be both demotivating and unhelpful to the child’s progress. Once earned, a token cannot be retracted.