If your child is anything like mine he likes to push the limits and see just how much he can get away with. As a result his behavior is our biggest challenge.
At Aiden's new school they have a 5 card behavior system. All of the children start on green card at the beginning of the day. If they misbehave and are told to stop and either continue or repeat the same action they get a card pulled.
There are green, yellow, orange, red and blue cards, each with different consequences including having to sit
out of activities, notes to parents, parent/teacher conferences and removal
from the classroom. At the end of the week a behavior chart is sent home
and marked with any wrong-doings for the week and coded with the type of
misbehavior. (FD= Follow directions, T=talking, R=respect, and H/F=hands
and feet to self) If the student stays on green card every day for the
week they get a sticker on their sheet and a special prize.
We have not gotten
a whole good week yet, but we are doing everything we can think of to get
through to our son and get him to realize it is very important to
follow the rules. Surprisingly enough Aiden has not gotten a
card pulled for talking, but he has gotten his card pulled for the other three
individually 2-3 times a week. I started just trying to reiterate the
rules each morning on the ride to school, like the drill sergeant mommy I am,
hoping that it would help. I took away a couple of after school playground play
times and a trip to the big playground, but when Aiden had 3 yellow card days
week 3 vs. the 2 he had gotten week 2 I decided we needed to try yet another
punishment to see if we could get through to him. For two weeks now he
has gotten his daily "rules drill" and had to write sentences related
to his behavior chart as his at home punishment for misbehaving at school.
We make him write "I will keep my hands and feet to myself.",
"I will respect other peoples things.", "I will follow
directions all the time." and to add insult to injury we added "I
will be honest about my card color." to the list this week as well.
He has to write the respective sentences 6 times each time that
behavior shows up on his chart, before we will sign his behavior chart. Then we send the sheets to school give
his teacher the comfort of knowing we are trying to work on this at home too.
I hope Aiden did learn an
important lesson about honesty this when he ended up writing 6 extra sentences,
because he "forgot" (lied about) what color card he had.... twice (on
Tuesday and Wednesday)...annnd by the time he was finally done
writing his sentences only one of the neighborhood kids was still around and he
left after 20 minutes. If it had just been one day, I may have actually shown
him mercy and let him off with a stern warning. Since he tried to confess to
lying about at least one day and he mentioned that two days had yellow strikes
on them at bedtime on Thursday, though he couldn't remember what he did and he
only fessed up to having his name on the board once this week, I only made him
write the honesty statement 6 times.
It seems like we are making an impact since there was an improvement in the number of days Aiden behaved at school last week, but only time will tell. Now as long as he continues to improve on his honesty and behavior, we will be heading in the right direction.
Aiden is doing Really Awesome academically and I have some fantastic news to share about that tomorrow, for now it is getting late and time for me to sign off. I hope you have enjoyed this article and as always feel free to leave any comments, feedback or suggestions. I love getting to hear from my readers. :)
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