Discipline (Day 3)

I had something else planned for today's post (rather Thursday's post).  However, that all changed when Davian got home from school.  He walked through the door with a look of shame and fear.  As he burst into tears, he confessed that he had a "blue card" at school today.  This means that he moved his color from green to yellow to blue due to behavior in class. 

I had a choice to make in that moment in how to react to my little boy who was devastated.  I chose to snuggle him and listen to his explanation of things.  He was so upset about the situation and having to tell us about the "blue card" he didn't need me to further lecture about the importance about appropriate behavior at school.  He would have consequences at home as well, but this time they were not severe.  We discussed the consequences and agreed that no screen time for the evening would be appropriate.

Last year, we spent the majority of the school year frustrated by Davian's behavior.  He was "pulling sticks" everyday!  We tried everything in the book to straighten his behavior out, to no avail.  We used consequences at home to varying degrees.  We tried positive notes, special treats after so many days of not having to pull sticks.  You name it, we tried it!  Finally, after lots of trial and error, his teacher and I used a token system. Davian would have to earn so many letters, stickers, tokens everyday.  At the end of the week, he would get to pull a prize from his own special stash that he had picked out at the dollar store.  It worked for a while.

This year, we have only had two days in 6 weeks during which he has had to turn his color.  My point is that if your child is struggling with discipline at school, it is not an indicator that he/she is going to always struggle.  By struggling, I mean that your child is having to be disciplined by the teacher consistently over a two or three week period.  One or two days in a week doesn't indicate a major problem. 

Secondly, you need to advocate for your child.  Set up a conference with your child's teacher and discuss some ways that you can motivate your child using positive reinforcement in the classroom.  It should start with short time intervals and gradually move to longer intervals.  During this conference some things you might want to discuss would be any patterns in the behavior.  Is it during transition times?  Does it happen when your child is playing with a specific child?  Is the behavior a reaction to work that is too easy/too hard?  Also listen closely to what your child is saying.  If your child consistently complains that he/she is being blamed for things that other children do, discuss this with the teacher as well.  Follow up with the teacher to make sure that the plan is implemented and effective.  Change may be slow so be open to small victories and celebrate them.   

Finally, establish consequences and rewards at home if needed to reinforce the importance of appropriate behavior at school.