Collect bottles
The bottles have to be gathered, sorted, carried and fed in one at a time, and only after all that does the receipt appear. The chain is long relative to the reward, and that is where it usually breaks. The steps below make the whole route visible from the start.
♂Collect bottles
A boy puts plastic bottles into a green recycling bin.
♂Collect bottles and cans
A person carries a bin full of bottles and cans.
About this visual support
Bottle deposits are a textbook case of delayed reward. The work happens at home, in the garage and in the car, while the payoff arrives at a machine in a shop, perhaps several days later. For anyone who finds it hard to keep a goal in sight over time, the task loses its meaning somewhere between the second and third bag.
Visual support makes the long chain manageable by breaking it into parts with endings of their own. Collect, sort, carry out, feed in, take the receipt: five pictures, five completions. The child also sees how close the machine has come, which makes the last stretch easier to push through.
A concrete tip is to link the money to something specific before you start, ideally with a picture of it. A sum in the hand means less than a clear thing to save towards. In Routined the bottle run can sit as a weekend task with a few steps, and the app can be tried for fourteen days at no cost.
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