[aspenhall]

I use the trust as it relates to age issue with my dd who is 7...and it works wonders!....

I also don't give her warnings...I wake her up, set out her breakfast and tell her the timer's been set. She knows when 30 min is up, food is removed and she is to get dressed, at 15 min whatever state of undress she is in, she gets her hair done and is sent out the door. (she walks to school 2 blocks)

But she loses trust points which lowers her "responsibility age" and she HATES that...I wouldn't let a 2 yr old play with messy paints, or playdough....so if she acts like a 2 yr old then I have to treat her like one....

It's been the MOST EFFECTIVE THING I've ever done for her.

Oh and, losing points is making my job harder in any way than it should be...and you lose 3-5 points (cotton balls in a jar), but as you gain them back, you only gain them back one at a time...much harder to earn trust back once it's been lost....

[Joy2566]

For the smoking issue, at first I tried so hard to prevent the kids from smiking. What I found was that it only encouraged them to be sneaky about it. My policy became: 1. I would not help them get cigarettes. 2. They had to smoke outside and put the cigarettes in the locked medicine cabinet, so the little ones couldn't get them. 3. They could not smoke in front of the little ones, nor encourage them to smoke. They all agreed and smoking really became a non-issue. As far as the getting up for school; going to school was a condition of their probation. This was not a choice. I only had one kid refuse to get up. It was a struggle to get him up, finally I quit fighting with him and when the bus left and he was still in bed, I called the PO. PO came and picked him up in handcuffs and took him to school. After the third time he was sent to a detention facility. It really is the jpo's job to enforce the probation conditions.