“Jackson Family” Follow-up

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has a profile of last night’s family:

Letting the kids know you mean business is one of the techniques Jackson, who lives in St. Charles, learned from Jo Frost, TV’s “Supernanny.” But in Jackson’s case, she has to mean business times three. She’s the mother of triplets – sons Will and Ethan and daughter Isabella – and wrangles them solo for much of the week while husband Terry Jackson works more than 200 miles away in Kansas City.

Things started roughly for the family of five.

A 1989 graduate of Webster Groves High School, Jackson (whose grandfather was St. Louis TV pioneer Frank Eschen) was living in Cincinnati when she had the triplets after 2 1/2 months of bed rest. They were almost 8 weeks early, weighed between 4 pounds 2 ounces and 3 pounds 8 ounces, and weren’t even out of the hospital when husband Terry had a job offer in St. Louis. Lisa had always wanted to move back home, and when the babies were 6 weeks old, they did.

The article also shares something that didn’t appear to make it through the final edit, a “spot” system.

Isabella, especially, responds to praise, Jackson said, but “it’s remarkable how well all the kids do when you praise them.” Frost offered the family a tangible reward system for re-enforcing good behavior: “two frogs and a lady bug with spots,” with more spots added when a child did something good and enough spots adding up to a special prize.

The spot system “worked great,” Jackson said. “They were so excited to be earning spots.”

It worked for a while, that is. Then “somebody took all the spots and hid them.”