My DS8 who is in second grade at public school has begun what appears to be his annual downhill slide at school. His teacher wrote today to say that we need to create a behavior plan for him. In Kindergarten and 1st grade (and this year), his behavior was great in the fall and early winter. However, once January hit, he started misbehaving. And now it is happening again (e.g. correcting his teacher in a disrespectful way, not staying on task, making jokes and being silly when not appropriate).
I don't believe he is being challenged enough at school (although, not by lack of my trying to get him more!), but we've been compensating for this with activities outside of school (e.g. science and math tutor and lots of extracurricular activities). In many ways, he can act quite immature (e.g. potty jokes, difficulty sitting still). So his teacher and others have been hesitant to let him skip a grade and I think this also leads to their underestimating his abilities.
What I could really use is feedback from you all on if you think this is just a behavior/respect problem or do you think it's a result of his not being challenged enough? How would I know the difference? And why would it start in January each year?
