Parents or caregivers often ask " How do I get my children to help with chores!" The following are some tips to encourage them and motivate them to complete chores in the home. 
1.  Discuss reasons why it is important to do chores. For example, so that the house looks nice when their friends come over. A second reason might be to help the parent or caregiver so they have more time to cook for the child or go places with them. 
2.  It is helpful to make a list of possible chores and have the child choose a specific number that they would like to do. If the child enjoys the chore intrinsically he will be more likely to perform the chore. 
3.  A list of reinforcers that the child would like to earn weekly or daily for performing the chore can be useful. It is helpful to involve the child or observe him closely to make sure the reinforcers selected are actually going to motivate the child. For example, a child that does not like music will not be motivated by earning music tapes. 
4.  Making a daily schedule with the time the chores will be performed is helpful so that it becomes a rountine for the child.
5.  Make sure all the children in the household are participating in chores so that no child feels he is doing more than he should be. 
6. Finally, social praise and excitement about the chore by the caregiver can always helps strengthen the probablity that the child will continue to help out!  Try to use an excited voice, be specific about the childs positive character within the praise and specific about the chore that you are happy with. 
The above tips will increase the enjoyment of the chores and the likelihood that they will perform chores! 

Money skills are very important in our society. The exact identification of the coins or dollars is important but not as important as functional use of money and teaching this skill. Below are some techniques and tips to think about using when teaching your child to use money. Some of them may be useful for your child! 

1.  To teach the use identification of specific coins it is more useful to teach in the context of actually using the coins. Try setting up a little store of items for your child to buy from you and ask him to give you the correct amount of money. Roleplay, guidance and verbal instructions can be used if he does not immediately hand you the correct coins. The items in the store can be reinforcers or other reinforcers can be given when he does correctly give you the amount of money for the item after a verbal instruction asking which item he wants to buy. 
2.  Flash cards are a good technique but usually this is not as effective in generalizing to the real world as actually practicing the skills. However, flashcards with coins or pictures of coins might be used to show the child which coins should be used. 
3.  Roleplaying situations and how much money is needed for items can even be done verbally while driving or waiting at a doctors' office.
4.  When you go somewhere practicing buying items is invaluable. Have your child pay for the item. Give him a wallet and some money and when you arrive practice ordering, paying, getting change and thanking the person selling the food. 
5.  Finally, try a variety of places to buy things such as stores, restaurants or even vending machines in order to generalize the money skills to other areas of life.
Money is a basic skill in life your child needs to function. Teaching these skills through role play, verbal prompts, physical assistance, using visual aides and real -life situations to practice the skills will result in faster and more effectie teaching of this new skill! 

Attention deficits must be assessed and specific problems identified. Some possible tips to improve attention during the classes to suggest to your child are listed below.
1.  Make sure child resolves any issues with you or the classroom as much as possible before school and suggest to the child that he leave these problems at the door of the class and think or talk about them with you at a later time. 
2.  Make sure your child has organizational materials for his class such as calenders, notepads, dividers, stickies, pens and pencil available. 
3.  Be sure to check the vision of hearing with a professional such as audiologist, otologist or opthamologist prior to classes to be sure all his sensory awareness is functioning as well as possible of the information the teacher presents. 
4.  Also, general physical including dental and medical evaluation to make sure these issues do not interfere with learning new things in the classroom. 
5.  Also, make sure he goes to sleep earlier enough to get at least 6-8 hours or more sleep per night. Sleeplessness can effect the childs' ability to focus and attend in the classroom. 
6.  Once he is in the class make sure to remind him to take notes  on lecture including a special pad or calender for assignments. 
7.  If the child has a tendency to perform any nervous habits or talk to much provide them with a competing response such as hands in pockets or playing with a bracelet to prevent the inappropriate behavior from interfering with attention to the teacher. 
8. Encourage the child to review what the teacher says to himself before leaving the classroom and ask any questions before leaving the class. This will assist with retention of the information learned and assure that he gets any information missed before leaving the classroom.
9. Review notes daily or when possible to assure they are organized and all assignments are completed. Provide a strong daily reinforcer  selected by the child for good behavior or no reports of problems or missed homework daily. 
The above tips will assist your child to optimize his attention and reduce his problems  in attending during the classroom! 

Parents or caregivers can use every activity during the day for them to  learn something. For skills that the child knows it may be just a matter of inservicing or teaching him a skill. For children that do not have the skill it may be he needs some demonstrations or prompting and fading to learn the skill. 

Parents might begin by designing a schedule or writing down what they will do for the day. For example in the morning preparing breakfast, getting dressed and making lunch. The child can be motivated and prompted to help perform these skills. If he does not know how to make a sandwich you can prompt him with verbal instruction or demonstrate how to make a sandwich. All of the skills in the morning can be taught rather than doing them for your child and a reinforcer after completing all these task such as music or television can be given to maintain the skill. Social praise should also be paired with the skill. The advantage to the parent or caregiver is that if you teach the child to do these skills then the parent or caregiver has less to to during the morning and more time for getting themselves ready.

This type of training and reinforcement should be done wherever the child goes during the day with the parent or caregiver.  For example, if you go to the gas station they might help with opening the gas cap or holding the handle to give the gas.  If you go to a bank the child might be asked to get a deposit slip for you, open a door, hold your purse while you are making a deposit. 

If you count every opportunity during the day you have to teach your child it will probalby be a very large money. If you wait to teach them things after work or at night you will have a couple of hours. If you teach them skills throughout the day his progress in learning basic skill will be multiplied significantly! Before you know it your child will be the helpful, independent person you always hoped he would be!

The New Year is a good time to set positive expectations and goals for your child each year.  Some of these goals are for his school behavior, some are for his behavior at home and some might be for the future!
Children usually seem to live up to your highest or lowest expectations. Therefore it is a good idea to set reasonable but high goals.  If you do not expect high goals then they will assume that it is acceptable and that they will still receive the child's usual reinforcers even if he does not perform as high as your child might be capable of performing.  

At school parents should set some standards and the reinforcer that the child will receive. By definition the reinforcer is something your child wants and will increase his good behavior.  For example, if your child likes outings to restaurants. If he does well at school with his grades during a particular week and there are no reports of behavior problems he might earn an outing to a restaurant your child loves. 

At home it is good to have more frequent reinforcers set up since you are usually there to give them out. For example an activity schedule for the child with specified behavior to perform in order to get the reinforcer is helpful.  Parents should try to expect no behavior problems so that the expectation is very high for that evening in order to get a story read in the evening for example.  Also, expecting higher level skills like sharing, preparing food for others, helping other siblings is a good idea. Provide a strong reinforcer for these high expectations such as computer games or other games for example if your child likes these items. Also, pair the reinforcer with some praise which is specific to his character. Soon your child will believe he is a generous, affectionate, helpful hardworking person if you expect that from your child!:)