David's Diary: Thursday, May 9, 2002

Kevin Gets Fifty Points

Keeping the children motivated and moving ahead at school is a constant challenge that Karalee and I face. Jocelyn is great about motivating herself and she only needs encouragement, but both Kevin and Allen need special things to keep them doing school work. Each boy is assigned stickers (i.e., points) for doing certain school activities. For example, Kevin gets one sticker per subject that he completes well and he is expected to do four subjects a day. Kevin gets additional stickers for getting up in the morning without complaint and in a timely manner and one more for doing his journal. When either Kevin or Allen gets fifty points they receive an award. That award is an hour or more of special one-on-one time with either Mom or Dad. The system works reasonably well and today Kevin had fifty points.

Kevin had an excellent day and completed a lot of work, so we decided to have a special fifty point reward. We left the boat and had lunch together at a nearby restaurant. We then walked around Palma, exploring streets, big and little, seeing street performances, glancing in shop windows, and then stopping on the main walkway to have ice cream. We even stopped at an Internet Cafe and looked at the pictures and videos of the Volvo Around The World Ocean Race before returning to the boat. Kevin got his fifty point reward and the two of us got to spend a special afternoon together.