caerula's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- hurts me more than it hurts you. not really. The Kid is in big, big trouble. Worse than when he broke the paper towel dispenser with his head. I don't think we're overreacting here. It's a matter of respect for us, and for any authority figure, and a lesson in Why It Seemed Like a Good Idea At the Time Isn't a Valid Excuse. Last Thursday, he had a sub. And apparently he and his new best friend J decided, in typical 4th-grade-boy fashion, to be major buttheads about it. Talking, getting up, goofing off, knocking over chairs, blah blah. The sub left a note for Mrs. W. about it, who then tells both boys Friday morning that they are this close to getting an Action Plan (school speak for sending a note home to be signed by parental figures). If she has to speak to them at all on Friday, they're in major trouble. So YMB gets in trouble Friday not once, but twice, and got an Action Plan. This involves having to write out what you did wrong, WHY it was wrong, and what other choices you could make. This always cracks me up. "Could you have made a better choice?" to a 9-year-old. Who is going to say, yeah, not get caught. Or something similar. He came home on Friday and offered no hint of any of this. Told us his day was ok, that nothing much happened, the usual. He went to J's birthday party Friday evening. Saturday, he came along to Kitty's shower, since Blue had his all-day class and everyone who would normally watch him was at the shower anyway. He was really good, played with the little girls in attendance and didn't make a fuss. I let him go home with EssFemale and Buttercup to spend the night with SmartKid. Sunday Blue's parents took him out for the afternoon to a friend of theirs who own horses, and then sledding and MickeyD's. So he had a hugely busy but all fun weekend. Monday he got up complaining of a stomachache. He was overly dramatic about it, and pretty obviously playing it up, but he was tired and they have half-days this week due to conferences, so we let him stay home. Explained that it's ok to need a break once in a while, and if he was honest with us about it we'd give him the benefit of the doubt. Asked several times if there was any particular reason he didn't want to go to school. Explained the consequences of us finding out he was trying to avoid homework or a test or anything. He insisted he was just really tired and didn't feel good. We gave him a break. So, Tuesday. I got home from work a few minutes before he got off the bus. Heard him come in while I was changing clothes, and came out to find him sitting on the couch staring at a piece of paper. I asked him what was wrong. He silently hands me the paper, with the look that a dog gives you just after she's peed on the rug. It's the Action Plan, of course. So I ask him what happened today, and he admits that is was actually last week. Sure enough, the sheet is dated 2/28. I read through the list of his sins � which admittedly, were fairly minor, but added up to one really annoyed substitute teacher and an equally annoyed classroom teacher � and sent him into time-out until Blue got up, since I wasn't dealing with this by myself. He got the lecture from Blue, and the requisite "What were you thinking?" (to which the answer is always, of course, "I don't know). The upshot is he's pretty much grounded from everything even remotely entertaining for at least two weeks. He gets to come home from school, do his homework, and then find something non-electronic and non-playing-with-friends to occupy himself with until bedtime, which is rather earlier than usual for now. With the explanation that yeah, he would have been in trouble for getting an Action Plan, but the consequences wouldn't have been nearly as severe if he'd told us about it on Friday. "Well, I didn't want you to have a bad weekend." That was his excuse. He was only thinking of us. Uh-huh. That kid thinks too much for his own good sometimes, and it�s a little frightening how effective his little deception was; we usually can tell when something is bugging him, and he almost always tells on himself within 24 hours because he carries around major guilt. But we really didn't have a clue all weekend, he seemed perfectly normal. This does not bode well for adolescence. We decided, too, that a temporary grounding really wasn't enough to let YMB know how serious this was. Goofing around in school, yeah, that's annoying and he knows better, but it's to be expected once in a while. He'd been really good lately � hasn't had an Action Plan since October � so we probably would have cut him a little slack there. A week's loss of privileges, maybe, since this is his third AP and that results in an automatic after-school detention, which inconveniences us as well as him. But lying to us, even by omission, is never going to be even remotely acceptable and he's got to understand that. So we decided, for one, that we are permanently making his bedtime an hour earlier. This isn't quite as random as it might seem; one of his excuses for his behavior was that he forgot to take his medicine Thursday and Friday morning (despite a big note on the kitchen whiteboard that says YMB TAKE YOUR MEDICINE) because he was so rushed, and he's always whining that he's tired. So we told him, very reasonably, that being tired can make you cranky and forgetful, and obviously he wasn't getting enough sleep, so from now on he's to be in bed at 7:30. Until we tell him different. The look on his face was priceless. Poor kid. You'd think we'd consigned him to a dungeon on bread and water. The beauty of it is, I get to watch Jeopardy and Buffy and Idol (Go Clay!) in peace the evenings Blue's at class, and the evenings he's home it gives us an extra hour alone before he has to get ready for work. Maybe even alone in the bedroom with the door locked. Hmm. Works for me. The part about spending more time with Blue probably should have come before the bit about my tv-watching. Sorry, sweetie. So yesterday, which was a snow day, he had the nerve to get annoyed at us because we made him clean his room. We were all home together all day yesterday, as Blue already had the day off, and I'd taken a vacation day for a machine-quilting class which was then cancelled because the teacher couldn't make it in on the nasty roads. So we took advantage of the time to work on some organizing stuff we'd been putting off � I sorted through almost all of my books, and have a huge pile to sell now, and Blue cleaned out closets. I also took a nap, but that's beside the point. We were obviously working, and YMB's whining because he has to help. It was one of those "you're on my last nerve, kid" sorts of days where we just wanted to lock him in the closet for a while and givehim something to complain about. Don't call Child Protective Services, we wouldn't really do such a thing, of course. We did relegate him to his room for much of the day, though, after a good stare from me (Blue refers to it as my EvilMom look) and a comment from Blue about how he should really think about whether or not he should be pushing his luck with us right now. Surprisingly, he got a good bit done towards room-cleaning after all, and was rather chipper this morning. Maybe a good slap-down was really all he needed. They always say that kids need discipline, right? 2:21 p.m. - March 06, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||