Where to begin---
difficult child has been irritable since before school began when he found out he was not placed in class with the majority of his friends. He spent the first couple of weeks acting out, at which time we received calls and emails from his teachers. After a few rough patches, he seemed to settle down.
Then last night we get a call from the division head. Seems our difficult child defaced a globe in a classroom that doubles as a Spanish classroom during the school day and test prep class in the afternoon. Our difficult child takes Spanish in that classroom and has a lousy record of bad behavior in Spanish dating back to last year. So, test prep class is chaotic and the division head has to come into the class to lecture them. After test prep was over, difficult child, egged on by other students, and defaced the globe. (they were unsupervised. I spoke to difficult child after class and he had permission to hang out with his friends for a half an hour before he came home.) What makes this a special difficult child story :slap:is that of course he did not rush home to tell us. The principals call was the first we heard of it. And turns out that no less than three of his classes were lectured because of this incident and plenty of time and space was offered to the offending party to confess. Not our guy. Three kids finally told the division head privately that our difficult child had been the one who had written on the globe. The principal talked to our difficult child and then we got the phone call.
Our difficult child's first response was, I wasnt the only one who was did it! Well, yeah he did the actual did, but others told him to! :surprise: difficult child said at the time, he thought it was funny. I have hypothesized the reason he was placed in a class without the majority of his friends this year, stems from his deep seated desire to be cool and linked with the popular kids. (difficult child is overweight, an AS -type brain and could easily be a candidate for nerddom if his interests had not morphed from trains and pokeiman to baseball and basketball). This was the situation last year and difficult child was ALWAYS in some kind of trouble for goofing around and causing a disruption in class. It so happens that the cool kids are also the kids who have to work hard in order to get the concepts and info taught in class. Our difficult child is blessed with ability to absorbed knowledge whether he wants to or not. This means he can goof off and still use his recall abilities to do ok academically. Though, as you can imagine, he doesnt do as well as he is capable because, why should he? Doing well in school is our hang up not his! :geek:
After about a half hour, he apologized, but that really didnt happen in earnest until mom brought up the conversationagainabout looking into therapeutic school settings, since his impulses and judgment seem to require more supervision than we will be able to manage in a home setting as he moves into high school. Then the apology and pleading began in earnest. Later, before he went to bed, one of his friends called and told difficult child KJdifficult childs best friendhad been one of the kids to talk to the division head. difficult child was furious all over again, because KJ knew how much trouble difficult child has been in at home and he ratted him out! So now he is giving KJ the silent treatment because KJ got difficult child in trouble! Got to love difficult child logic! :hammer:
The consequences at school are that he apologize to every class and the teachers, replace the globe out of his own money and he is not allowed to hang out with his friends after test prep class. We are devastated and embarrassed on so many fronts. Turns out, he wrote something derogatory and racist on different countries of the globe. This is a progressive school that prides itself on diversity. Our difficult child is white and Jewish, as is his mom and I am a black American woman. His grandparent FLED Europe from the Nazis with his grandma spending a significant portion of her childhood in South America. So much so her accent is Spanish rather German and Hungarian. And did I mention I do diversity training for a living? :slap:
He has a conscience and says he is sorry. But he has also said that before, as recently as two weeks ago when his anger was getting the best of him at home and school. He is able to admit that the added pressures of high school application processwhich includes this tutoringare stressing him out and is the reason he has such a short fuse. And while we appreciate his ability to be self-reflective in hindsight, we pointed out to him he has resources and skills available to him that means he does not to get to indulge in this angry, defiant behavior, just because he is upset that he is being corrected, reprimanded or having a limit set.
We are really worried because this is the year school has to send information about kids to HS we are applying to. And although difficult child gets this, he is still so madabout everything, all the time AND feels justified in his anger. Private schools are under no obligation to take kids, especially in a city where the spaces for HS that would be a good fit, are limited. And public school space is even more limited.
And what is he so angry about? His class placement, his teachers, his mom being a lesbian, his moms partner being black and therefore outing him wherever we go and disrupting his image of himself as a cool kid. (Yes, everyone knows he has two momshe has lots of friends, in school and out of school with two moms, interracial 2 mom families, two dad families, bi-racial kids, mom dad, 2 kids and a dog-- you name it,it's part of our social circle! When i first came on the scene, he was sooo excited to have a second parent, that we skipped the hard 'i hate the step-parent phase' we are in now.) And he gets to air all of this, and we are very goodtoo good maybeabout respecting his feelings and all of it. But enough all ready! There are people starving, unable to get proper medical care, education, jobs. Hes blessed to be only upset about homework and the racial/sexual orientation of his family. (Okthats my personal rant--) Then again, I suppose all of this is a rant but :crazy:
Are we raising a sociopath? The stunts he pulled this summer include losing his cell phone and then lying to us about it by saying someone mugged him. The phone showed up at his moms office because someone nice picked it up off of the bus seat, called mom at work and returned it to her office. difficult child found us unreasonable then because we seemed to 'not get over it' fast enough to let him go to a pro baseball game the next day with three 13 year old boys and no adult.
Should we be looking at a return to medications? I am the only one in the house who thought they worked, but I have lived a shorter time with the explosive behavior and therefore dont have the same level of scar tissue they do
What was the address of the fantasy island someone here was dreaming about recently? You know the one with sun, drinks with little umbrellas and--dare i say it--no kids--at all! :smile:
difficult child has been irritable since before school began when he found out he was not placed in class with the majority of his friends. He spent the first couple of weeks acting out, at which time we received calls and emails from his teachers. After a few rough patches, he seemed to settle down.
Then last night we get a call from the division head. Seems our difficult child defaced a globe in a classroom that doubles as a Spanish classroom during the school day and test prep class in the afternoon. Our difficult child takes Spanish in that classroom and has a lousy record of bad behavior in Spanish dating back to last year. So, test prep class is chaotic and the division head has to come into the class to lecture them. After test prep was over, difficult child, egged on by other students, and defaced the globe. (they were unsupervised. I spoke to difficult child after class and he had permission to hang out with his friends for a half an hour before he came home.) What makes this a special difficult child story :slap:is that of course he did not rush home to tell us. The principals call was the first we heard of it. And turns out that no less than three of his classes were lectured because of this incident and plenty of time and space was offered to the offending party to confess. Not our guy. Three kids finally told the division head privately that our difficult child had been the one who had written on the globe. The principal talked to our difficult child and then we got the phone call.
Our difficult child's first response was, I wasnt the only one who was did it! Well, yeah he did the actual did, but others told him to! :surprise: difficult child said at the time, he thought it was funny. I have hypothesized the reason he was placed in a class without the majority of his friends this year, stems from his deep seated desire to be cool and linked with the popular kids. (difficult child is overweight, an AS -type brain and could easily be a candidate for nerddom if his interests had not morphed from trains and pokeiman to baseball and basketball). This was the situation last year and difficult child was ALWAYS in some kind of trouble for goofing around and causing a disruption in class. It so happens that the cool kids are also the kids who have to work hard in order to get the concepts and info taught in class. Our difficult child is blessed with ability to absorbed knowledge whether he wants to or not. This means he can goof off and still use his recall abilities to do ok academically. Though, as you can imagine, he doesnt do as well as he is capable because, why should he? Doing well in school is our hang up not his! :geek:
After about a half hour, he apologized, but that really didnt happen in earnest until mom brought up the conversationagainabout looking into therapeutic school settings, since his impulses and judgment seem to require more supervision than we will be able to manage in a home setting as he moves into high school. Then the apology and pleading began in earnest. Later, before he went to bed, one of his friends called and told difficult child KJdifficult childs best friendhad been one of the kids to talk to the division head. difficult child was furious all over again, because KJ knew how much trouble difficult child has been in at home and he ratted him out! So now he is giving KJ the silent treatment because KJ got difficult child in trouble! Got to love difficult child logic! :hammer:
The consequences at school are that he apologize to every class and the teachers, replace the globe out of his own money and he is not allowed to hang out with his friends after test prep class. We are devastated and embarrassed on so many fronts. Turns out, he wrote something derogatory and racist on different countries of the globe. This is a progressive school that prides itself on diversity. Our difficult child is white and Jewish, as is his mom and I am a black American woman. His grandparent FLED Europe from the Nazis with his grandma spending a significant portion of her childhood in South America. So much so her accent is Spanish rather German and Hungarian. And did I mention I do diversity training for a living? :slap:
He has a conscience and says he is sorry. But he has also said that before, as recently as two weeks ago when his anger was getting the best of him at home and school. He is able to admit that the added pressures of high school application processwhich includes this tutoringare stressing him out and is the reason he has such a short fuse. And while we appreciate his ability to be self-reflective in hindsight, we pointed out to him he has resources and skills available to him that means he does not to get to indulge in this angry, defiant behavior, just because he is upset that he is being corrected, reprimanded or having a limit set.
We are really worried because this is the year school has to send information about kids to HS we are applying to. And although difficult child gets this, he is still so madabout everything, all the time AND feels justified in his anger. Private schools are under no obligation to take kids, especially in a city where the spaces for HS that would be a good fit, are limited. And public school space is even more limited.
And what is he so angry about? His class placement, his teachers, his mom being a lesbian, his moms partner being black and therefore outing him wherever we go and disrupting his image of himself as a cool kid. (Yes, everyone knows he has two momshe has lots of friends, in school and out of school with two moms, interracial 2 mom families, two dad families, bi-racial kids, mom dad, 2 kids and a dog-- you name it,it's part of our social circle! When i first came on the scene, he was sooo excited to have a second parent, that we skipped the hard 'i hate the step-parent phase' we are in now.) And he gets to air all of this, and we are very goodtoo good maybeabout respecting his feelings and all of it. But enough all ready! There are people starving, unable to get proper medical care, education, jobs. Hes blessed to be only upset about homework and the racial/sexual orientation of his family. (Okthats my personal rant--) Then again, I suppose all of this is a rant but :crazy:
Are we raising a sociopath? The stunts he pulled this summer include losing his cell phone and then lying to us about it by saying someone mugged him. The phone showed up at his moms office because someone nice picked it up off of the bus seat, called mom at work and returned it to her office. difficult child found us unreasonable then because we seemed to 'not get over it' fast enough to let him go to a pro baseball game the next day with three 13 year old boys and no adult.
Should we be looking at a return to medications? I am the only one in the house who thought they worked, but I have lived a shorter time with the explosive behavior and therefore dont have the same level of scar tissue they do
What was the address of the fantasy island someone here was dreaming about recently? You know the one with sun, drinks with little umbrellas and--dare i say it--no kids--at all! :smile: