Those Lights Will Cost You

Our kids have a bad habit of leaving the lights on when they leave a room. Reprimanding them was having no effect, so earlier this year we started charging them 25 cents every time we discovered that they’d left a light on. The kids didn’t really understand money well enough for this to be an effective tactic either and, as I was soon reminded, you have to be careful pointing out someone else’s bad behavior if your own behavior isn’t quite perfect. I accidentally left the light on in my bathroom one day, and Marshall gleefully said, “Mommy, you owe me 25 cents!”