Big Sigh! The hard part of being a Mom

My last blog I started out with "I love being a Mom" well I also need to say being a mom is HARD, especially when you have to figure out how to best discipline your children so that they will make better choices. My son Starboy is a creative, wonderful, funny, talented boy. But he has a second side that is sometimes manipulative, disrespectful, and dishonest at times. Starboy's first five years of life, before we adopted him, were quite mixed up. He had loving family - grandpa, aunts, and grandma, but he was passed around a lot and I believe he learned that every home and person has different expectations and different rules. Thus, he is big on testing people and boundaries. Especially new teachers.

When he got a new primary teacher last year he threw a chair at her. In summer school the first day last summer he ran around a room screaming in one class, hid under a table and talked back to the teacher in another. This year he has struggled with his music teacher who is a first year teacher and is just too nice. He has had to be sent back to class many times for being disruptive in there. When I asked him why he is mean to the nicest teachers at school he told me to please tell her she needs to be stricter. Luckily his 1st grade teacher was also his Kindergarten teacher and has worked very well with him and me to help him learn to control some of his impulsive behaviors. We have had a few days here and there where we have had problems at recess, or carpet time, or with toys that aren't supposed to be at school. But overall through-out the year she has seen improvement.

Well on Wednesday Starboy had a substitute for his 1st grade class. You know the poem "the Little Girl"

There was a little girl

And she had a little curl,

Right in the middle of her forehead,

When she was good,She was very, very good,

And when she was bad she was horrid

.

This poem describes my son precisely (except for the fact it's about a little girl) I will write the list of things that happened on Thursday with the substitute I was given this by the secretary of the school when I was called about Starboy having a very very bad day!

1. Carpet Time - disruptive, bossy, silly - trying to get other kids to laugh, kept telling teacher she was doing everything wrong. When asked to return to his seat he crawled like a baby, when she asked him to walk he kept crawling, when told to stand up had a fit.

2. After recess tore up a paper and threw it on the floor (it was a treasure map from recess) had a 15-20 minute screaming tantrum before the teachers aid could get him to calm down

3. Started crying and getting mad and disruptive because he didn't understand an assignment.

disrupting the entire class.

4. At lunch he stole a picture from another child and lied saying it was his, The teacher had seen the other 1st grader draw the picture so Starboy finally relented and gave it back.

5. Fought with another child and then kept changing the story of what happened first he fell down because the child scared him, then the story was that they kicked him on purpose, and the final story being "they karate chopped my face"

6 Witnessed another 1st grader have an "accident" laughed at them. The teacher asked him to not tell anyone else or to be rude. Starboy then went and told the whole class the child had peed their pants.

7. After the teacher asked him to stop this behaviour he slid across the desks on his stomach. At this point she tried to take him to the office. He refused to go, so she had to call the secretary to come and help her. This is when I got called. (I'm not sure why I didn't get called earlier)

This is just the list of things that the substitute remembered. She said to the secretary "He's impossible, I don't know what to do with him." So, he came home and I was so frustrated I sent him straight to his room and told him his father and I would discuss his punishment when Coach got home from work.

When Coach got home I explained what had happened. I had told Starboy before that going to school was a privilege and that if he couldn't be polite to his teachers he could be home schooled by Coach. (not by me which would be a reward, because he always wants to be with me) So Coach decided we should implement this for the rest of the week. I called Starboy's teacher and made sure he would not be missing any end of year testing. She was sad to hear he had behaved so badly for the substitute. We both thought so much progress had been made. Anyway, she said his testing was complete. He would miss the fun Teddy Bear Picnic that was scheduled for today, and a spelling test. She agreed with me that this might work. We went and discussed the punishment with Starboy, and of course there were great dramatics and fits. All of his toys were removed from his room and Coach explained that this was now his school room. From 8:30-4:00 each day.

So yesterday and today Starboy has had home-school.. now for those Mom's out there that home school your kids Great Job! I know you make it fun and interesting. I have no desire to home-school thus our goal was to make it miserable so that Starboy wants to return to school and be polite to his teachers and substitutes. Coach got 16 worksheets of all sorts for him to do (at least 2 each hour, as well as having him read and then copy a book.

He can come out of his room for Breakfast - 8 a.m., Lunch - 12 p.m. Snack -3:15 and to use the bathroom. He did not get to come upstairs and be with me and the baby. I spent about 5-10 minutes with him at each break. When Coach got home about 4:30 he corrected the papers, then had Starboy start homework spelling, and reading. Starboy came upstairs for Dinner with the family at 6:30 and then showered finished his homework and went to bed at his regular time of 8p.m. He said last night that he doesn't like home-school and wants to go back to his elementary school. We explained the expectations we had in order for him to return and stay at school.

Today the same routine has occurred, except this morning he tried to tell me he was sick and his stomach hurt. . He did not have a fever, and I was pretty sure he was just faking. So I told him I am so sorry you are sick. You can choose to be sick and stay in bed all day or to do your home-school assignments. If you choose to be sick I will bring you some medicine and water and check on you every couple hours, but you need to stay in bed, and today will not count as a home-school day so you will need to stay home on Monday; or you may choose to do home-school today and we will have the same schedule as yesterday. You decide. He decided to do home-school. He ate all of his breakfast no problem and I just served him his lunch so the stomachache thing was a ploy I believe. At lunch he showed me a story he had written about a boy who was disrespectful to his teachers. I asked him how it was going to end, and he shrugged his shoulders. I told him "I hope it ends with him changing his behavior and making good choices so he can enjoy the fun things at school."

Will this tactic work? I have no idea, but we are trying it. The hope is that when he goes back to school Monday he will be more polite, and hopefully when he starts summer school with new teachers, he won't be horrid to them. Since Coach teaches 7th grade he has a lot of disrespectful idiot teens that he deals with everyday. We really want to help Starboy fix his behavior now so that he doesn't have problems at school when he is older.

Just thinking about it makes me tired and sad and confused. I wish he came with an instruction manual. He is doing much better at home and has learned to be very respectful, polite, and kind almost rarely having a problem that begins here. (His tantrums are usually about discipline for things he did else where) I just hope he will somehow internalize the fact that good choices= more privileges and a better life, while bad choices = less privileges and a more difficult life.

I guess we will just have to wait and see if it works and if not go back to the drawing board.