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[EDITED] In my family we use a Token Economy Strategy to teach our kids how to behave properly. It mainly consists of a board where they stick one sticker whenever they manage to fulfill one of the task they are assigned with. Sort of this

enter image description here

Once they've got a certain number of stickers they can spend them to buy things or to do whatever they like.

In my son's class kids are used to joking about this meme

meme

miming it while they utter repeatedly "Money money money"

Now: this morning he was pretty proud of the number of stickers he has earned so far and wanted to brag about that by mocking the money's meme, and so he asked me what word to use instead of money to refer to the value of the stickers.

What should he say? Tokens? Points? Scores?

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  • I don't understand this "game". But aren't the kids "winning" stars? Jan 13 at 12:56
  • @FumbleFingers or are they "earning" them? Jan 13 at 13:11
  • Like I said, I don't understand the game. For all I know, the parents might like to think the kids "earn" what the kids themselves think they "win". I doubt if the opposite would apply, though. Jan 13 at 13:20
  • yes the kids earn stars or more generic tokens.
    – esa
    Jan 13 at 13:54
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    A small correction: if you mean "the kids often joke about this", it should be "the kids are used to joking about this". "The kids are used to joke about this" looks like a passive sentence meaning that someone else uses the kids to make a joke about this.
    – stangdon
    Jan 13 at 14:09

1 Answer 1

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In a game where you score points, individual actions may gain individual points, and the overall total points at the end of the game are your 'score'.

So, for example, if you were asked 10 quiz questions, you answered 7 correctly for one point each, and one special question that attracted 2 points for giving two details, your overall score would be 9.

Taking that directly to your activity - each day has points, and the weekly total would be their score.

However, 'scoring' as a verb might not be the message you want to send to your kids. 'Earning' points sounds better in context, although it doesn't seem so bad to use the noun 'score' to refer to their weekly total. You could just say 'total'.

You could also just say 'stars' instead of points.

You earned 2 stars yesterday and 1 today, so your total stars are 3 this week.

Don't use 'token' - that is something that represents something else, and if you're not going to say 'points' you'd be better just calling them what they are - 'stars'.

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    Thank you! So points it is.
    – esa
    Jan 13 at 14:15

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