My son is a bright, sweet boy, but I regularly get a phone call from the school about his behavior. I am not in denial of any attitudinal problems. He is highly capable of completing class and school work, but REFUSES to do it!
It’s not a problem just at home, it’s at school too. He will “clip down” (explanation here, our school has the chart reversed) to the lowest level, then give up on the rest of the day. The teacher and I worked out clipping back to green at lunch, so he doesn’t feel like he can’t dig himself out of the hole.
When he sits down to work, he distracts himself. As an only child, he entertains himself all of the time! So, it translates into when he needs to do something serious.
Then, last week, craziness hit the fan! I got TWO phone calls home from his teacher. One at lunch, then another after school. Devastated is such a strong word, but I was really disappointed. I was happy to find a new reward – Trick or Treating with his friend. He had to get at least green every remaining day of the week (three days), then at least one of those days had to be two levels above that. He managed to work it out for Trick-or-Treating. I was proud and annoyed.
So, today, at 5:00 p.m., I received a phone call from the school. Having last week to work with and knowing that today was the first day back at school, I took a deep breath. Ready to listen to the bad news on the other end of the line. At least he made it to the end of the day – all the way through the day. As I sighed, I picked up the phone. It was the principal – oh, sh**, the principal I though, today must have been a REALLY bad day.
Alas, it wasn’t a bad phone call! The principal was calling to report that my son had a really good day! He landed on YELLOW today, with no prompting and no “extra” reward! She had already called my husband, which I guess she assumed was heavily involved in the daily discipline of my son. Although my son informed her that it was really important that she call me too,because he wanted me to know that he was good.
My heart smiled.
Open Session 