"back to normal"

With the start of summer vacation a few weeks ago we ushered in a new season in our house--the season of chores.  Rachel got her first assigned chores.  Rather than paying her an allowance, we decided to pay her in tokens (they're actually poker chips, so we call them "chips"), which are redeemable for TV/video/computer game time.  Each chip is worth 15 minutes.  She receives 4 chips each morning, just because (so one hour of screen time), and for each of her four chores she completes in the morning (it has to be done in the morning or it doesn't count), she earns another chip, for a possible total of eight chips per day, or two hours of screen time).  I decided that this method would kill several birds with one stone.  It would give her some responsibilities, it would limit her screen time, which was getting a little out of hand (ever since I was pregnant with Rebecca, and completely exhausted, I became more lenient with how much I allowed, and I needed to rein her back in, now that I'm actually getting some sleep and life has settled down a bit), and it would teach her a little bit about spending and saving, even if there wasn't real money involved.

The first couple of days, she loved it.  She whizzed through her chores, earned her chips, and used them at various times through the day.  She had to make choices like, "Do I want to play a few computer games now or should I save my chips so I can watch a movie later?"  Then the chores started losing their excitement, and she made some choices not to do a couple of them (she puts the silverware away every morning without fail--she loves that one--it's the making her bed and brushing her teeth which aren't quite so popular).  Then she watched a movie in the morning, and since she hadn't done her chores, she hadn't earned any extra chips, and therefore didn't get anymore screen time for the day, which she didn't like one bit.  Since then, she's been better about doing her chores, though she needs some friendly reminders almost every morning.  I struggle with whether or not I should make her do them or let her choose.  There's a part of me that says she just needs to do it because it needs to get done and she needs to get in the habit.  There's another part of me that says that she needs to learn the consequences of not doing it.  That's the part I've stuck with, for the most part, so far.

So after a few weeks of this system, it's going pretty well.  (At least, I thought so.)  She's learning to save her chips so she can watch a movie in the early afternoon or evening, which she likes to do.  She doesn't always use them all every day, so she has more the next day, and she likes that.  And I don't have to always be the bad guy, telling her no, she can't watch something, because it's the chips that dictate whether or not she can watch. 

But evidently, she doesn't think it's going as well as I do, because the other night as I was putting her to bed, out of the blue, she told me, "Mom, I just want things to get back to normal around here." 

"What do you mean?" I asked.  This was completely out of the blue, so I had no idea to what she was referring.

"Like the chips...and the chores...and everything."

I stifled a laugh, because the way she said it was just so funny.  But I said, "Rachel, this is just the beginning of chores!  You're going to have to do chores your whole life!"  And we had a discussion about being a family and helping each other to get done the things that need to be done, and so forth. 

But I guess "back to normal" for Rachel means getting to watch lots more TV, playing lots of computer games, and not doing any chores.  Too bad for her, that this is just the beginning of the "new normal."