Reward charts are a popular way to get children to do their chores but one mum has flipped the idea on its head and come up with a rewards chart that gives chocolate to the true heroes of parent/child negotiations: the parent.
Maralee Bradley, from Nebraska, US, designed a reward chart inspired by a number of Halloween-related posts she'd seen about counting the calories for the chocolates you eat.
Instead of rewarding children with sweet treats for their tasks, the chart suggests the parents reward themselves for appropriately handling a tricky exchange with their offspring.
"Around Halloween I kept seeing this picture go around that listed different candies, their calorie count and what kind of exercise you should do to burn them off. Um, no thank you," she wrote on Facebook.
"Motherhood is hard enough without candy guilt. So I whipped up this little chart to put a bit of a different spin on it.
"Motherhood is hard, candy is delicious and maybe it's okay to sometimes give ourselves a little reward for being awesome mums. No amount of candy can 'burn off' the stress and frustration of your average day of motherhood, but I'm not going to say it doesn't help. This is entirely tongue-in-cheek, so I hope you enjoy it in the spirit it was intended."
The parody chart resonated with a lot of parents online who loved the idea and even recommended bigger rewards.
"That Milky way is way too tiny for meeting a need at 2:37 am," someone commented.
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