Our latest approach to building independence and reducing nagging

In a busy four person household, it's easy for Devon to disappear to his bedroom or the basement for a little (OK, a lot) of time spent doing what he likes to do best, including watching his extensive DVD collection, often simultaneously listening to music or watching TV online or whatever. Nagging is unpleasant for all involved, but nobody in this family comes home from work and then just switches to family mode, both parents often have "work-work" to do in addition to all the regular household chores and responsibilities. Devon has a few scheduled activities and responsibilities in the evenings and on weekends, but we were still spending a fair bit of time nagging, and my husband and I often found ourselves stepping on each others toes and/or giving contradictory instructions.

After a bit of trial and error, we came up with the system I'm describing here. We've tweaked it numerous times, but I think we're close to getting it right (or right for us, anyway).

Here's a picture of the system, which is mounted on the door that leads from the kitchen to the basement (or as I sometimes call it, Devon's lair - and yes, he has a perfectly fine, even spacious, bedroom of his own which is apparently reserved just for sleeping).

The blue cards represent "Devon time", each card worth 30 minutes. There's a fixed amount of this time allocated per day. The white cards represent tasks that need to be done. At the top there are two other types of cards: one states the targeted skill (e.g. putting on sunscreen by himself) and the other is intended to represent which parent is sort of in charge for that day (this has not worked so well, but I'm hoping that's a temporary consequence of my husband's new job). 

Some cards have a single action item: "take vitamin", "drink water", "gather books to return to library" or several related action items (all the different tasks involved in getting ready for the day).. Some are daily, a few are day-specific. 

Originally all of the cards were very specific, but I realized that wasn't going to help achieve my goal. I didn't want to, for example, have to determine whether there was laundry to be washed, or whether the dishwasher needed to be emptied, and then put up the appropriate card. Instead, I wanted Devon to make that determination, so now we have cards that more generally list the tasks that are related to an area. The idea is to encourage him to first consider whether the task is needed at all by taking the time to check, rather than having him dash through the chore in order to get back to a desired activity, an urge which has led him to hang dirty laundry on the line or add dirty dishes to a dishwasher full of clean dishes. So the "kitchen" card includes "load or empty dishwasher" and "soak, wash or put away plastic dishes" (which we hand wash): he needs to identify which, if any, activity is needed and then do it. When the task is done, he moves it to the "done" column.

The cards are also helpful in reducing nagging. Devon may claim to have done all his morning bathroom routines, but if I hand him the card or direct him to it so he has to read through the list of those routines, he'll often recognize that there's one that he has missed. This removes the need for us to remind him. They also avoid the issue of having one parent direct him to an activity that has already been done with the other parent.

He's very print oriented so the text-only cards work: others might respond better to pictures (when I need visuals, I like to use the free Picto Selector (https://www.pictoselector.eu/) which offers a lot of low-detail images. 

For the 30 minute break cards, he can use more than one at a time if he wishes. He has a simple kitchen timer in the basement and another in his bedroom that he is supposed to set (they're loud enough we can usually hear them too). When the break cards are used up, that's it: we still get argument, but the cards give us a more neutral way to engage about the matter. (I'm a bit fan of pointing rather than arguing.)

Originally I created a single set of cards and each morning we had to skim through them and select the ones applicable to that day. That turned out to be a considerable pain, so instead I made a full set for each day, with a few seasonal cards as well. Sometimes we'll make a determination not to use a card (for example, there's a "Family walk" card that we might not put up if the weather is terrible, and a "play game" card that we might not use if the day is particularly busy with scheduled events). If it's a holiday or someone is sick, we may leave the chart blank. I'm sure the cards could be prettier, but they do the trick. 

Because my handwriting is appalling, and because we were doing lots of duplicate cards, I used Avery white index cards, which come in sheets of three so you can run them through a printer. (Product code 5388 if you're interested.) You can add the content for the sheets online through the Avery website and save them to a PDF for printing. The online Avery tool sucks: you have to be very careful to select the option to edit each card individually otherwise you risk over-writing all your work. I would have preferred to set up a template in Word or another authoring tool, but since we're using the cards in portrait mode rather than the conventional way I just couldn't get the results I wanted without way too much work. If you were printing landscape you could probably find or create a Word template easily.  

The card holder is one we got from a school supply store: the vertical divider is just a piece of tape we ran down the middle to create a demarcation between "to do" and "done": we couldn't' find anything exactly as we wanted online or in stores. 

We have found this system helps the whole family: would love to hear any other suggestions or if anyone else gives it a try!