Most charts are abandoned by the adult, not the child, and usually within two weeks. This is not a character flaw. It is a system that asked a tired person to remember a new thing every day, which is not something tired people do.
The fix is not discipline, it is placement
Pick a moment that already happens without you deciding to have it — the walk home, the five minutes after teeth, sitting down after dinner. Attach the chart to that. You are not adding a habit, you are adding one step to a habit that already survives.
| Fails | Survives |
|---|---|
| "Every evening" | "While they brush their teeth" |
| Whenever something good happens | Once, at a fixed moment |
| Both parents, informally | One person, one time |
Make it smaller
One moment a day is enough. A chart you actually reach three times a week beats a perfect system you stop using in nine days — and it beats it by a very long way, because the second one also teaches your child that things like this do not last.
And a missed day must cost nothing
If skipping a day breaks a streak or shows up as a zero, you have built something that punishes your child for your week. Leave gaps blank. Count the total, never the run. Then a busy two weeks is just a quiet two weeks, and you can pick it back up without anything having been lost.
This is the failure mode nobody warns you about, and it is the most common one there is.