Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Addressing unacceptable classroom behavior

What's worked for your family when your child is disrespectful to a teacher (not paying attention and talking during directions, talking back, etc.)? Experiencing this again with a teacher (art). I'm just not sure how to get through to DS. He'll definitely have consequences at home, but he's apparently more interested in doing what he wants than following her rules. (Which do not seem unreasonable.)

What about having your child write a handwritten note to the teacher apologizing? (You can help feed them reasons if they can't think of any good ones!). We always tell our kids to try and respect teachers since they are poorly paid, are dong their best, etc.

We are planning on that, along with loss of screen time for the month. We have had this conversation with him at least three or four other times and always talk about how it affects the teacher and other students. He fixes the behavior then backslides. It's maddening. Starting to worry that it is a character defect.

We had the similar situation with DS7's music teacher. He was being disrespectful: he wasn't listening to the instructions, chatting with other kids when the teacher is talking, rolling his eyes and sighing, etc.

I had a phone conversation and email messages with the music teacher and was asked to meet her at the T/P conference. The music teacher thought that DS did not appreciate music. As the teacher was telling us what they learn in class, my DH realized that DS was probably bored with what they are learning. He is a talented piano player and does appreciate music. What they learn in school is probably too "kids like" for him.

We did talk to him about not being respectful to the teacher. Even he thinks the class is not interesting, he should still follow the rules of the classroom and respect the teachers. His behavior is affecting other kids in the class so it's not fair to them. He's getting better now but we'll see.

I am wondering if your DS only behaves this way in the art class? My DS was only like this in music class. He's good in PE class and he's doing exceptionally well at the art class.

For us, loss of screen time for a month might be a lot or too much.
Recently, my 7th grader and his friend got detention for talking excessively in their accelerated math class. (It's Algebra I, although it's called some other weird name since it's common Core). I was like, really??? Who gets detention in Honors Math?
I had him write a long letter of apology to the math teacher- he hated doing it and hated giving it to the teacher but I think he got the message since he doesn't want to do that every day.
We explained to him that there are like 30 kids in the class and the teacher has probably 5 periods a day or 150 kids! The teacher doesnt' need some kid to be a pill. Who needs that?

It's most chronic with this particular class. He used to love art but has decided he is not good at it (we've talked with the teacher about this and she assures us that she tells them everyone can do art in their own way, but he doesn't buy it, imo). He is a socializer, the chitchat part of this issue has occurred off and on since, well, he left Montessori at age 5. We are told it has improved quite a bit over time and that he is normally a good classroom participant. The disrespect part (he talked back to her) is newer. We have had multiple conversations about how it hurts his classmates when he does this, he seems to understand and then this happened again.

I would say two weeks but spouse is insistent on a month. Also is a lot more convinced our kid is incorrigible. DS will write the apology letter, after reading the note we got from the teacher. He will also likely get to write "I will respect my teachers" several times.

The issue for my DS really started right before last Christmas but the teacher let it go because she thought it was close to the holidays so the kids were getting anxious. However, it continued after they were back from winter break and that's when the music teacher contacted me. I checked with her a few times after our phone conversation to see how he was doing. We tried to remind him how he should behave in school. We also warned him if he's being disrespectful again, we would take his iPad away for 2 weeks. These seemed working for us.

Whenever my kid has socialized in art class, it has been due to a combination of boredom, poor classroom management skills of the teacher and the inability of the teacher to make the projects interesting or creative. We have told our son repeatedly that studying art is a privilege and that art will make him be creative and give him a chance to express himself. We also told him to just finish the task quickly if he is uninterested in it and then go on to do other things in the spare time (they can do cutting work, craft work etc if they are finished). We also conveyed to the art teacher that she should pull out DS's desk to a far corner of the room and ask him to work alone if his chatter continued as we did not want our son to disrupt other people's work (we observed one class and it looked like other kids were very interested in their work). The teacher thought that it was harsh, but we insisted. He sat alone for 2 classes and decided that he would rather finish his art projects quickly and quietly and then spend the rest of the period going through the Art History books that the teacher keeps in the class than sit alone. That has been working for us for a few months now.

Our strategy has been to ask the question, "How does your behavior affect other people?"

Significantly, DC honestly does not know that it is having a negative affect on other people and we have to teach that it does. Specifically.

Really specifically. And we have had to keep at it because this continues to come up as time goes on, but we also see improvements in character development too. Parenting is really hard!

In addition, I make sure to reenforce positive behaviors or even attempts at what we are working on.

I would be careful that the one month of screen time punishment doesn't backfire on you. What is going to happen if you need a consequence for the same behavior during that one month?