Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Thinking about pulling out from school

DH got really mad after today he found out , our DS was sent to the principal office , because of the note that DH wrote on the private behavior chart that was sent home yesterday .

On the behavior chart there was a note from PE teacher saying that DS pushed another boy . According to DS the boy was the one pushing first and he just pushed back , and the teacher called them and asked them , but chose to believe the other boy and DS had to sit out the whole time , while the other boy didn't get any consequences . So DH sent a note to school , asking why the other boy didn't get any consequences since it was also him doing the pushing ?

And another note from lunch , about throwing leftover piece of bread into the trash can , DS missed and picked up the food and threw it in the can , but he was noted " no self discipline "
So DH sent a note about that too , and said what's the big deal about this ?

This morning , the teacher saw the note and sent DS to principal , principal then started telling DS that he needs to own up and not acting like he didn't do anything wrong . DS knows he did something wrong by pushing the boy back but he just didn't think it's fair that he got punished and the other boy didn't . The principal said how do you know the other boy didn't get punished ? DS said Because he had to sit out the whole time and the other boy didn't . Then both the principal and assistant principal said to our DS " well it's up to you whether we should keep on going with that green folder ( private behavior chart ) , or you can just throw it away "

At this point i feel like these 2 adults are bullying DS by saying stuff like that .

Also they called this morning , to have a meeting tomorrow afternoon with the them ( principal , assistant principal and counselor ) . DS just had the testing yesterday done at school . But DH is really mad right now because of DS shouldn't be getting scolded for the note that he sent .

DH already had paper ready since last week , to bring up everything that they need to provide for DS and what might work and might not work ( we learned this from our meeting with the pyschologist ) . We went to pyschiatrist and was told nothing , DS just bored , no mood disorder . And also went to a therapist / pyschologist last week , also was told that the teacher just dislikes DS , she could tell from all comments in the communication card . It's not like we're not trying to have DS evaluated , which we did , and both professional said there is nothing wrong with DS .

The school has created all these problems for DS .. and making him like he's a monster .

Do you think it's really worth still to talk with the school ? DH is furious right now and he said he's thinking to talk to the superintendent about how poorly the school is handling this situation .

can't blame you for wanting to pull him out. I'd be upset too! We had couple incidents when my stepson was in elementary school. He sure wasn't an angel and school wasn't his thing but he was never the kid that would get into any fights, not to mention start one. He ended up expelled for a week for "fighting" on the school grounds after school ... when the real story was that an older and much bigger kid smacked him and provoke him (there WERE witnesses) and my stepson defended himself (one punch back at which point a teacher got there. Thankfully since he'd had no chance against the bigger boy). The result was, our son expelled and the other boy didn't get any punishment. The school defended that decision by the fact that the boy was about to move to another city / school in a week or two. Whereas our kid was expelled for behavior and fighting. This was just a tip of the iceberg at which point his mom agreed to him moving in with us and he's lived with us ever since. This was 8 years ago. He never once had "behavior" problems in any of the schools after that to this day. He always had class participation issues and overall keeping his grades up problems but that was whole another story (suspected ADHD).

So, I can certainly see why your son would be upset with the way things were handled. As for throwing trash, I guess I can see why they wouldn't like it (imagine every kid doing this) on the other hand, I don't see that as a reason to send notes home and such. I mean ... who has not done this thing any chance we got as kids? lol

Is it possible to transfer him to another school? Sometimes an entire change of scenery is needed.

Wow. Those incidents with your son seem so trivial. I find it hard to believe the principal doesn't have anything better to do than police a kid who misses when he throws leftover food in the trash.

If you have other options for your son, I think I would consider moving him right away. It doesn't seem like the adults in this situation are prepared to help turn things around. And even if they suddenly apologized and said they were over-reacting, would you really trust them to do the right thing for your son?

Thanks for the replies ,

Master of none ,
I can understand if the food was messy of course i wouldn't be too happy to see someone throwing it from distance away . But it was just a tiny piece of bread , the leftover from chicken sandwich so i know it wasn't that messy .

Our DS was not like this before we enrolled him in this school , yes he's no angel , but he's not a trouble maker like they make him to be . Not to mention thinking maybe we should medicate our perfectly fine DS .

We did have him evaluated , in fact we gave the school the letter that the pyschiatrist gave to us that she did an evaluation on DS and found that DS didn't have any mood disorder , DS probably will benefit on getting an IQ test , and as far as him being argumentative , maybe he can work with the therapist . As a result , the school wanted him to be evaluated by the school's therapist that specialized in autism children . We refused and we said we'll go our own way to have him seeing therapist . We did couple of weeks ago , that's when the therapist said that the teacher doesn't like our DS , she can tell from the nitpicking the teacher wrote on the communication cards daily . From dissambeling pencil , to spinning ruler , to talking during silent lunch . But seriously though , do you blame him ? if he's done with his job within 15 minutes and having to wait for another 30 minutes not doing anything but reading ?? That's the only thing that they allow DS to do .. i know he loves reading but there is only so much reading one can do .. and sometimes you don't feel like reading all the time either , so there goes him assembling something from 2 mechanical pencils , spinning rulers , being creative creating a person from a pencil and a paper .. but those get him in trouble .

The pyschologist does mention that the school's rules are being ridiculous , and the teacher needs to stop nitpicking every little thing he does , because he started to feel like everything he does is wrong , and people always choose other student over him , he already feels different as it is , but with the school doing all sort of this stuff , it just makes him feel even worse . He wonders why people just don't understand him , why does his teacher likes yelling at him so much .

He has to stay in this school til 4th grade . I've talked with counselor couple months ago , she said she'll work with DS but within these 2 months , she only saw him 2 times !! what good does a counselor do then if she only gets to see him 2 times ?

The private behavior chart does concentrating on the positive behavior but the therapist said things like :
- use time and material wisely <-- this sort of thing is too vague , they need to say what it really is , and being bright kid as he is .. he can manipulate words and and being very technical if you don't say it clearly .

-be respectful to adults and peers <-- this was also considered vague by the therapist , she said it's better if the school said " use kind words , nice words to each other , using flat tone "

And about the note , yes they should have called DH or even me .. to explain things . DS did admit he push and he did wrong , but he found it's unfair that he got punished and the other boy didn't , it's not like he didn't admit he was also wrong . I don't know why the school just don't get this .

Yes , the pyschologist that we went to the last time , are also able to advocate for our child . We're about to have a meeting with the school this afternoon , and we think if nothing changed , we're going to have the pyschologist to come to the school and talk with them also .

And i surely hope he gets a better teacher next year , last year he had an awesome teacher , this teacher was 100% different than the current teacher . He never gets yelled at and his teacher was always reminds me that our DS is not a boy who will always gets 'green clip' every single day , there are kids that will follow rule to the T and will get green everyday , but ours isn't , and i should accept that . I remember that meeting with her .. but we didn't have a big problem like with the current school right now . My DS still wished he attended that previous school with the same teacher because of how good of the experience he had with that teacher . He's not the one who will do what is told if you're yelling at him , the more you yell the more he'll go against you .

Since school is only 1.5 months away from summer , i don't think we can do anything about the teacher . If we do decide to stay in this school i surely hope the principal will choose someone who can understand DS .. he's not someone who will just do everything that he's told without asking question . Like you said he needs to go to advanced class , a teacher who can stimulate him to keep his mind busy , and a teacher who he can respect . Not someone who yells at him on daily basis .

jaylivg,

The situation your ds is in with this teacher simply sounds toxic - I understand you are very close to the end of the school year, but I would still recommend requesting an immediate teacher change. This is just me, so might totally *not* work in your situation, but if it was my child, I'd keep them home from school starting right now until the situation is resolved. We had to do this with our dd when she was in first grade and we were stuck in an unsafe situation in her classroom. We'd tried working it out through talking for several weeks and were getting totally stonewalled by the school - but keeping her home for simply 2 days worked like magic. We didn't call in sick or anything, we simply sent an email on the first morning saying we were not sending dd in to school until the situation could be resolved in a way that was safe for dd to attend.

Your situation is slightly different in that your ds isn't faced with a physical threat, but I'd consider that being with this teacher has the potential to cause long-lasting emotional stress and potential harm. My 2e ds was with a teacher who didn't understand him at all in 2nd grade and he was beyond miserable - and he still to this day will tell me about how horrible that year was for him.


I agree with your therapist that more explicit instructions on the use of time and materials is a good idea, but fwiw, I do think that my kids even in early elementary would have been able to connect the dots on "be respectful to adults and peers" with behaviors that aren't respectful. I don't mean they were angels and were always respectful, just think that the "be respectful to adults and peers" in and of itself isn't unusually vague for a young child. I think it sounds like maybe your ds might need a little bit of help, maybe with role-playing situations with you that he might encounter at school that are causing him a bit of trouble with this.


This is such a tough situation, because you weren't there when it happened, and you only have your ds who is going to give you any information, and his teacher obviously has some type of bias against your ds. The flip side of this is, the school can't and won't tell you what happens to the "other" child in situations like this, and you can't focus on the other child. That's a life lesson we go over frequently at our house - it's fairly natural for kids to want to see the "other" child be treated in a way that seems logical and fair, and it sometimes doesn't work out that way, and other times when things happen at school students aren't going to be let in on what does happen with other children. So I try to reinforce with my kids that the important thing is to focus on ourselves and our own behavior, and let the other pieces sort out however they are meant to. You have to stand up and advocate for your ds in the big scheme of things (ongoing issues with his teacher), but for one-time incidents, like the other child not being "punished" - it's usually best just to let go.

I hope your meeting this afternoon at school went well.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Are you familiar with basketball...in basketball if a defensive player is planted in a position and the offensive player runs into him it is charging. Sometimes the defensive player dramatically falls in a way that the referee can't miss the foul.

You need to teach your child how to "take the fall and draw the foul." When he is pushed, he dramatically and loudly falls to the ground and stays there. One, he won't be tempted to push back and two, he draws the attention of the coach and the coach sees that he was the one "fouled" and not the offender. Then he stands up and says he can shake it off.

Polarbear ,

I agree with what you're saying about the teacher situation , we did bring this up earlier too , but the principal insisted that the teacher is a good fit for our DS , because she's very consistent and she's really trying to make things work for DS . Although i really don't see it that way now because obviously DS isn't happy and because of all these problems , he feels like he's a bad kid .

That private behavior chart was working for him last week , he met his goal , almost meeting 90% of his goal everyday which is a huge improvement . And we do agree that the biggest obstacle for DS is talking and also being respectful with adults and peers .

Esp. being respectful , he talks back and this make him being disrespectful . If he thinks he can try to get away with it , he'll argue with you , he'll get you into an argument . This used to happen with me at home with him , but i chose to end it before i get sucked in into the argument or a debate contest with him .

The principal also notice this , and school thinks that DS likes the spotlight , he likes talking with adults , and he's trying to get them engaged into his favorite thing . Whether it gets him in trouble or not , he doesn't care .. because he gets to debate with them . The school thinks this was the problem with DS . It is possible .

They were saying that now in the classroom with the homeroom teacher , he's been doing better as far as being respectful because they said , his teacher just shut him up . So when he tried to argue , she would not give him a chance to argue , whether it's a hand signal , or whatever she does .. or maybe choose to ignore DS . They said it's been working .

Now , the school wants us to do the same thing , so if DS comes home from school , just look at the behavior chart and don't ask any other questions if he didn't meet his goal . Don't encourage him to talk and to manipulate us , his parents .

Do you think this right though ? I want DS to grow up and can talk with us , his parents , about anything . I don't want him to get an impression that we're not interested with anything that happened at school , or we're only interested with good things that happened at school not the bad ones . What if something bad happened and he didn't tell us because we didn't want to know about it , or didn't give him chance to tell us about it because the school said we should do the same thing like they do with DS ?

This will be hard for DS because i am sure he wants to tell us about whatever things happened at school . The school knows this will frustrate DS and thinks that we need to just do it and tough it up . DS is a person who loves to talk , he loves to tell you how his day was at school , he'd tell you why he gets in trouble , he would analyze the day point by point . And according to school and counselor we need to stop doing this . Because DS is liking it .. and he gets to manipulate the story and turns us parents against the school .

What do you think ??

Edited :
And not only it will frustrate DS , it will do the same thing to me too because i want to know how his day went at school , not just whether he meets his goals or not ( which is to collect 17 initials from being respectful , talking in appropriate time , finishes job , using time and material wisely )

Oh another thing , counselor said that DS is still a mystery to her , she can't figure him out .

I think telling you how to parent and interact with your child in your own home is ridiculous. There may very well be things that need to be tweaked in your interactions, but if your gut is telling you not to do this, do not do it. Home should be a place where it is appropriate to discuss pretty much anything, IMO. If not at home, then where? You are teaching your child to stuff his feelings down and not express them at all by following their advice.