Time to get Tough!

Regular readers will know that we have had some issues with Isaac and his behaviour at school and I am so grateful to all his teachers and assistants who have been working with him to try to get to the root of the problem.

Everyone seems to adore Isaac, he is the smallest in his class and his defence mechanism was to become the class clown and if he doesn’t end up on the stage when he is older I will be very surprised. 95% of the time he is a brilliant student – gets on with his work, enjoys his learning and is kind and helpful.

The other 5% of the time, for no rhyme or reason, he will refuse to do his work. Sometimes he disrupts the class, other times he lets himself out the door and runs around the playground and refuses to talk to anyone. We have been working with the school to see if there are any triggers but nothing. No-one can predict when it will happen.

Isaac is very much an outdoor boy and if we could afford it then I would put him in Forest School straight away, as I think it would engage him in the way he likes to learn, but sadly that is not a feasible solution.

This week we have had not one, but two of these incidents and hubby and I actually got to witness one for ourselves as he was asked to go and sit in a class he didn’t like and tried to make a run for it. We have tried the “softly softly catchy monkey” approach, the reward based approach which all worked for a time, but he is nearly 8 years old now and enough is enough – we are getting tough.

There are parenting experts out there who say talking to your child to say their behaviour isn’t acceptable is enough – well sometimes it isn’t. There has to be consequences for poor behaviour and children need to be taught right from wrong.

This time Isaac got a very stern talking to which wasn’t nice for any of us but needed to be done and he has lost his computer and TV privileges for a week. What this has done has encouraged him to play with his brother and sister more, he has completed his school project that he had until the end of term to complete (and wants to do more) and read when he goes to bed.

It is too early to tell if this approach is going to work, but something had to change.

Have you had similar problems with your children?

I would love to know what worked for you!

12 thoughts on “Time to get Tough!”

  1. Oh gosh it sounds like such a difficult situation. Especially because you can’t predict or seem to find a root cause to the problem. It sounds like the approach is working well so I hope it continues. My little boy is 2 so I have no advice really but I hope it all works out.

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  2. Sounds like my daughter. She would sit in the Wendy house and play, or do painting. It didn’t matter what the teacher had planned she just did whatever she wanted, when she wanted. She was a handful but so lovely. Her reports were always along the lines of “she is a lovely child but…” “she is very kind and thoughtful but..” I did find praise was better than punishment. She really didn’t care if she was punished but she thrived on praise so I stopped using the word naughty and praised her good behaviour. I would say something like It upsets mummy when you do “A” but I love it when you do “B”. It sounds woolly and indulgent but it worked. We found out much later that she was dyslexic and couldn’t concentrate but she grew up to be a lovely, kind and clever teenager and is now a wonderful woman.

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    • Yes, we are using postitive re-inforcement with him but although he loves being praised will still get these blips. I think part of the problem is he wants attention and doesn’t like to share it, plus he doesn’t have the maturity to get himself out of the situation once he is in it. Thanks for your comment and advice. We will persevere

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  3. Sorry to hear this. Great that his teachers are so supportive. I guess it’s a very difficult thing to tackle when it’s at school. We are having this problem but the opposite. Our 3 year old misbehaves at home. I guess they are just testing us. It upsets me so much and at the moment I have no way to resolve it. I’d love to hear people’s thoughts. Hope it gets better for you x

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  4. Isaac sounds just like my nephew. It turns out that he was acting up because he was finding the work he was given far too easy and he wasnt being challenged, got bored and the only way he could get attention was to act out. So they moved him up a year for a few months to see how he coped, so he would spend one week in a year above and then one week back in the classes he had been in and his behaviour changed so much, the change in him was amazing.

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  5. I can see this being Syd in a few years as he just wont do something if he doesn’t want to, I thought it was just me, but school have the same problem, and at the moment are letting him get away with it – but whats cute at 4 is probably going to be a problem when he is older!

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  6. I’ve not experienced these problems but I will say the technique you are using is very effective. My son isn’t particularly naughty but can be lazy about somethings. If I have needed to get the message across about something then restricting use of something that is important to him has been very effective.

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  7. I’m pretty tough on mine, sometimes I think you need to be, because at the end of the day, if they’re in school they’ve got to get on with it. Hope you see some improvement!

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