Why I built Pomjar

I figured out early that my kids are motivated by prizes. Treats, treasure boxes, that whole concept. So instead of saying things five times and going the hard way, I've mostly tried the honey route. There's also an age, somewhere around three to five, where kids are excited to help with grown-up things. It wears off later, but while it's there, it's real.

So I made chore charts. Printed them, laminated them, taped them to the counter and the wall so the kids could see them and check things off. The problem was that three of my kids were old enough for chores, soon four, and that's a lot of charts and a lot of wall. I tried one shared list instead, where each kid picked a chore and checked it off. That failed differently. Nobody knew whose chore was whose, and the hard ones never got picked.

What finished the charts off was height. A chart has to hang low enough for a five-year-old to reach it, which means a three-year-old can reach it too. My three-year-old found the chart fascinating. He scribbled on it. He ripped it off the wall. He threw it around the room. After the second or third time, I stopped re-taping it, and we went back to "do your chores" and chasing them down. That lasted maybe a couple of weeks before it was just nagging again.

The idea that actually worked came from my son's pre-K teacher. I was in her classroom for some event, and there was a jar on a shelf full of pom-poms, the little fluffy craft balls. She explained that the class had responsibilities, and every time they did a good job, pom-poms went in the jar. When the jar was full, they got a popsicle party or an ice cream party, something they'd agreed on together.

I copied it at home, and it worked. The kids got excited to earn pom-poms. They did more than their own jobs to earn extra ones. This past summer a full jar unlocked a 3D printer, which they'd been obsessed with since a friend showed them some printed toys. They were all in.

Then I found the weak link, and it was me.

I'd promise pom-poms for something in the middle of a busy afternoon. They'd do it. I'd get distracted and never put the pom-poms in. At the end of the day I'd try to reconstruct it: "How many did you guys earn today?" Some nights we were too tired and forgot entirely. The next morning I'd promise again, and they'd remember that yesterday's never went in.

To be clear, they were going to do the chores either way. The disappointment wasn't about the pom-poms. It was about me not doing what I said I would do. That didn't sit right with me.

I looked at the wall-mounted family displays first. I liked chores on a screen the kids could see and check off. But the more I dug in, the more they felt like a fixed screen running a one-size-fits-all program, and nothing about how we do things at our house is one size.

So I built the smallest thing I could think of: a jar that fills itself. Every time a kid finishes a chore, the pom-poms go in automatically. No me in the middle.

That's where it started. What I'd actually built, it turned out, was a little economy for the house. Jobs to do. Points for doing them. Things the points can unlock. It works a lot like the world they're going to grow up into.

I was going to buy a touchscreen and mount it on the wall. Instead I tried it on an Android tablet we already had, to see if it worked before spending money. The tablet was better. The kids carry it around, pass it to each other, take it to their room to check their chores. And once the arcade showed up, short games they can play with points, a tablet made a lot more sense than a wall.

More than I expected. I thought I was building a chore chart that dispensed pom-poms. What I got was my kids feeling like they could earn the things they'd otherwise have to ask me for.

Before, every "can I have…" was me deciding between yes and no. Now they ask for something, and I say yes, I'll add it to Pomjar. It goes on their prize list at a price I set, and they earn it whenever they have enough points. I almost never have to say no anymore.

They wait. That surprised me. Instead of spending points the moment they have some, they save up for a bigger prize, or hold out to get two things at once. They volunteer for jobs that aren't on their chart, because you can hand out spot points for one-off help. Approved chores that earn points or stars also fill the family jar by the same amount. The kids keep their full reward, and the jar moves toward a goal the whole house shares.

The part I didn't plan for was discipline. Points can come off as well as on. So instead of threatening a timeout, I say I'm going to take points if I keep seeing what I'm seeing. That lands, because now bad behavior costs something they worked for, and it's tied to a prize they can picture. It feels a lot more like how consequences work in the real world than a timeout ever did.

I've been telling my parent friends about this, especially the ones with more than one kid. One dad told me, "I don't know a parent who wouldn't want this." That's the best thing anyone has said about it.

What I'd tell you is that it bends to your family. Prizes can be pizza night, toys off a wishlist, or experiences. You set the price for each one: high for the big thing, low for the thing you were going to buy anyway, so they still feel like they earned it. Kids can pool points on a prize they all want. The youngest get a simple routine board with stars and no points at all.

And it's low maintenance, which was the whole point. At the end of the day you open the parent app and swipe: approve, approve, deny, approve. If you already run an AI assistant, you can connect it and tell it to add a prize or hand out points for you. That part is optional and, honestly, for the tech-savvy.

We're all going to buy our kids things anyway. Pomjar just lets them earn it first.

1. Vaillant GE, Vaillant CO. Natural history of male psychological health, X: Work as a predictor of positive mental health. American Journal of Psychiatry 1981;138(11). PMID 7294211. A composite of chores, part-time jobs, and school effort in the Glueck cohort of inner-city Boston boys, followed from age 14 to 47. It is not the Harvard Grant Study, and it did not measure household chores on their own.
2. Rossmann M. Involving children in household tasks: Is it worth the effort? University of Minnesota, National Council on Family Relations conference paper, 2000; summarized in a 2002 University of Minnesota research highlight. A small re-analysis of Diana Baumrind's affluent Bay Area cohort, not peer-reviewed. Early chore expectations went with better mid-twenties markers; a mid-teens start went with worse.
3. Deci EL, Koestner R, Ryan RM. A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin 1999;125(6). PMID 10589297. Across 128 experiments, expected tangible rewards reduced later free-choice interest in tasks people already found interesting, most strongly in children; praise did not.