About Us
Our Family
At The Badge Board were a small family run business, started by Preston and Ashley Voglund. Preston’s experience in entrepreneurship paired with Ashley’s passion and schooling in Early Childhood Education breed the idea of The Badge Board.
Our close nit family is comprised our two elementary aged children: Lucas and Emma. As every family has, we’ve experienced all of the highs and lows of parenting. Throughout the entire journey, it’s been our goal to simply do our best. As a parent, our best can look different from day to day, but we always looked for new ways to be better tomorrow than we were yesterday.
Our Inspiration
While looking for ways to drive good behavior at home, we noticed that our kids were always excited and proud to bring home a card full of stickers or hole punches that symbolized their good behavior at school.
We also noticed their interest in games that were centered around leveling up and recognizing their progress. In an attempt to create a hybrid of the behavior cards and a long term game of leveling, we concepted the first badge board, put together with laminated paper and velcro strips.
The kids (age 4 & 9) immediately took well to it, as we started handing out badges for all of the good things that we caught them doing. We also got to use it as motivation when we wanted help picking up, or doing chores. The kids were actually begging for things to do to earn more badges. Between the two of them, it was a race to be the highest level.
Positive Reinforcement
After nearly a year of constant use, we made some tweaks to the badge board, we became better parents, and we saw a huge improvement in our kids behavior and in our ability to motivate them. Our next step was to share this tool with all the other parents of the world.
Our core parenting philosophy is based on positive reinforcement with minimal use of punishment, only when necessary. Children crave our attention and when a behavior in our children receives attention, good or bad, their natural tendency is to repeat that behavior. We know, as parents, that we must focus on catching our children in the act of doing good, but with busy lives it can be tough to do that consistently.
The badge board added structure for our family, around this positive reinforcement, that propelled us forward on managing behavior, motivating our children, and becoming better parents. We believe that it can help your family too!