Review of Awesome Deck of Awesome for Boys and Girls, Series I

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Disclosure: We received a review copy of this item, but all opinions are my own! We don't let our kids spend a lot of time playing video games/watching television, but our 8 year old son LOVES doing those activities. We are using the Awesome Cards as a reward system. He has the opportunity to earn a card each day by doing a special task/chore or sometimes just by having a good attitude about doing a family activity. Each card can be redeemed for 10 minutes of "technology time" and it's really helping him do more around the house without me nagging AND he's whining less about when he can play video games. It's a WIN-WIN!

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Bought a pack of the boys/girls cards for my son (3) and daughter (6) and I am amazed at how well this simple idea works. I find that my kids are looking for opportunities to earn the cards even though we have not developed any sort of currency for the cards yet (i.e. one card allows to kid to do/get X). They enjoy earning the cards simply for the sake of collecting them.

What I found really interesting with this product was how my kids are searching for new awesome things to do now to earn a card. For instance, over the course of last year, one of my daughters big fears was jumping into a pool. Over our family holiday this summer, my daughter suddenly blurted out "dad, would I get an awesome card if I jumped off the dock into the water?" When the reply was "of course" off she went. Now, I made the mistake of leaving the actual cards at home on our trip, but this did not stop her from coming up with 6 more ways to earn throughout the rest of our holiday.

Any 'toy' that can help push my kids forward to accomplish more awesomeness in their life certainly deserves 5 stars.

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I was one of the beta testers for this product, but other than that I have no connection with Dr Awesome, who created it (and yes of course that's his real name! It must be, right?). I thought I'd best be upfront about that, but I have not been paid for a review, and the following are my honest opinions. I cannot be bought!

My daughter is three, and shall we say challenging? I practice gentle parenting and do not agree with time-outs or other punitive punishments. I also do not like reward charts (have a read of Alfie Kohn to find out why). So finding a way to discipline my child can be hard.

I tried out the Awesome Deck of Awesome and fully did not expect it to be much good for us. I didn't expect my little girl to be interested in the cards or earning them, but I was wrong!

First, I let her look at them but made it clear they were mine. She spent happy time sorting them out into piles of girls' and boys' ones (my beta deck was a neutral deck with cards for both sexes) and decided on her favourites.

She was then very keen to earn them by being awesome! I allowed her to keep them and gave her a purse to put them in. I now need a new deck because she has nearly all of them and refuses to give them back! I guess I should have made it clear to her that they were currency so I didn't run out, but she is too young to want to use them to buy treats for her, they ARE the treat. But that is great, because that is why and how they work.

With older children it would definitely work to get them to spend cards to buy treats.

I think the deck is great awesome in fact!

It focuses attention on the positive behaviour rather than the negative and offers opportunities for "bad" behaviour to be turned around and made awesome to earn a card. My daughter has grasped the concept of "being awesome" and even issues me with cards if she feels I have been awesome enough, which is super-cute and also makes it much more holistic. We are each of us both the teacher and the student.

The cards are fun, and although it might feel sexist to have girls' decks and boys' decks, we beta testers did ensure that designs were not focused on prettiness or being "feminine" so they are really just more focused designs than pigeonholing genders. I was pretty vocal about that in the beta testing!

It's surprising how many ways you can use the cards and how versatile they are all ages the Awesome Deck of Awesome blog has more ideas for how to use them.

In all, a great gentle parenting resource that you can use in loads of fun ways.