Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments School Discipline Systems

This is purely out of curiosity. How do all of you handle it when your child gets in trouble at school? What do you say/do once they get home?

That Stuart Little is one smart cookie! Seriously, if teachers are banging their heads on the same issues day after day something needs to change. Maybe it's the disciplinary system or the teaching style. Maybe there is an issue with a particular child or children. A child who gets disciplined constantly is not going to feel very good about themselves, which only feeds the problem.

For a long time, DS would not tell us anything about his school life. We also often took the teacher's side automatically when issues arose. In retrospect, I'd say we were pretty out to lunch, parentally. Now we assure him of our love for him whatever happens, and then talk things through. If we feel he's erred, we try to explain why, how, and may even do a play acting game with him on the topic. If we're not sure, we take it up with the teacher. If we feel the teacher has erred, we seek a tactful way to talk the matter through with her.

BTW, DS now is willing to talk to us about his school days, which we feel suggests we are getting our act together with him.

Fitzi,

We had a similar problem with the "stop light" discipline in first grade. My DS (now 8) would give Mr. Wiggly a run for his money (or name) at that age. Add to that a dash of highly asynchronous development, rampant boredom, and complete social cluelessness and we did not have an overly fun year for first grade.

All kids started out the day on green. The first warning sent them to yellow, and, yes, there was the public humiliation of having to go up in class and change your card. The next warning sent you to red. They did not take away recess time in first grade. Sometimes there were phone calls home if you had too many reds in one week. And the teacher did provide some positive praise by rewarding the entire class if everyone stayed on green. I believe that she made some form of chain with giant paper clips, with each day that all of the kids stayed on green earning one clip. When the chain reached from the ceiling to the floor, the class got to have some form of special treat... a movie day, party or special treats.

The problem that I had with it was that the other kids in the class very quickly decided that my DS, who was viewed as outside of the norm anyway, was someone that they could pick on and "tattle" for an imaginary crime to send him to yellow or red. Now, I don't believe that my kid was a perfect saint and that every card change was another kid's fault. But there were several girls in the class who delighted in getting my son to change his card. I volunteered quite regularly in the classroom and observed it happening. By the end of the year, they were telling the teacher that he was saying swear words in class when he didn't know any swear words. So the policy has some definite holes in it that a non-observant teacher can fall for. And this particular teacher took any accusation ("Teacher, Little Johnny pushed me!") as absolute gospel. She did not have to witness it in order to send a kid up in front of the class for public humiliation. DS lost all respect and gave up on the system after having to change his card for something that he did not do.


Oh my, fitzi!!! I would ask why a simple infraction like that is disrespectful to herself or the other children? I would counter that this is a kid testing boundaries, and now he knows that this was inappropriate. Kids learn by making mistakes like that. <one of Kriston's famous shrugs needed here! > And it is the teacher's duty to gently teach boundaries and discipline, as well as reading and math. (without getting their knickers is a knot!) Now if it happens repeatedly, then I would say that, yes, it would be an issue of disrespect. But not on a single occurrence. And I would add that most kids are inherently respectful until the situation (or teacher) causes them to lose that respect. And for most gifted kids, a lack of truth, justice, or fairness in a system is the fastest way for them to lose respect.

Oh, sing it out, people! Sing it loud!!!

We might still be in the school system if DS7's 1st grade teacher had heard you...

It does seem a bit draconian, but I think the other systems described here pretty much amount to public humiliation, too. I'm not really defending this system, though. It is not very effective. Since the kids get red x's routinely, they don't seem to perceive it as a big deal. It doesn't seem to be any more damaging than timeout, or sitting with your head down during recess or other variations on that theme.

I've given it some thought, and I think that schools' hands are really tied when it comes to discipline. The only privilege they really have to take away is recess, and they have to apply the same consequences to everyone or they will be seen as unfair.

I am not too excited about really against rewards like class parties and buying candies from the teacher for behavior that should be the expected standard. I agree that taking away recess from wiggly kids who need to run off energy doesn't make much sense, but I'm not sure what else the school can take away.

If anybody has an idea for a fair, workable, effective, non-humiliating discipline system, I'd love to hear it! I'm not thrilled about the red x system myself but I've just sort of accepted it since I'm not sure what else can be done.

Why assume that giving a bribe or taking away a "privilege" like recess--which I would argue shouldn't be a privilege, but a necessity--is the only option?

Add more work. NOT academics, of course, though I must admit a certain personal fondness for the idea of requiring an essay on justice or something like that to get the point across, even though I can see the drawbacks to using schoolwork as punishment... No, I mean physical labor like cleaning or physical exertion like walking.

"Making the punishment fit the crime" is also a good idea: treat a fellow student badly, and you must cede your place in line to the child or some other such sacrifice. They used to require kids to clap erasers as a form of punishment, and I think requiring some sort of positive service to the school along those lines to counteract the negative service the child has done makes sense to kids. There's a sort of justice in it that appeals to kids.

Or be creative: if a misbehaving child's favorite color is red, make him do his coloring page without a red crayon that day. Something like that would send a very effective message to my DS4, whose love of the color green knows no bounds!

As for bribes, there are some that aren't so bad. Whatever happened to promising extra recesses for well-behaved kids? It's free, it's easy, it's sugar-free, it's healthy, and it always worked on my classes when I was a kid. Or has NCLB made it so that There'sNoTimeInOurBusyBusyScheduleForThat?

*sigh*

And, of course, there's always Stuart Little's solution...

Those are just off the top of my head. If I were a teacher with a chronically misbehaving class, I'd spend more than the 2 minutes I just spent brainstorming/researching some creative solutions. (Though in my experience, people who are dedicated and creative enough to be willing to brainstorm/research other options usually don't NEED to because they're already being creative and interesting enough in the classroom to keep the kids' attention, and they don't HAVE chronic behavior problems! :p )

I don't think I have the skill to educate a teacher in her own trade and still earn her good will. We decided today that this environment will not promote the emotional growth we've seen DS recover over the past year. So we are moving immediately to a private school some distance away, which opens next week, where the director speaks with obvious relish about her 'bright but quirky kids.' This will be challenging to us financially and logistically, but we've decided we'd rather wrestle in these dimensions than with a staff who sees quirky as something intolerable.


Cathy:

Have a look at the last one I described; I think it makes sense.

Thanks again for the many thoughtful comments on this topic!

Kriston,

In general, I agree with the idea of natural consequences. That's pretty much how I do things at home. And I know that your examples of clapping erasers and not getting to use your favorite color are just examples. The little punks at our school would laugh at a consequence like that! If kids are routinely yelled at and whupped on the behind as a form of discipline at home, timeouts and changing colored cards at school are just not going to make an impression. This is a tough crowd...

It's really an intractable problem which takes so much time and energy away from actually learning anything.

I like the idea of service consequences. I don't think the school will go for it, though, because it would require too much teacher supervision and possible school liability. They only have resources to punish en masse.

Yup. If a school limits itself to en masse modes of discipline, then shaming and taking recess are all that's left, neither of which is actually effective.

You know, I think it's really the same problem as the GT issue in some ways: "I'm sorry. We can't do any sort of individualized discipline. That would be too hard/expensive/unfair/much work. Instead we'll do this other thing that doesn't work well at all, but that fits within our narrow definition of what discipline should look like and that we can adminster en masse."

Substitute "education" for discipline, and it starts to sound really familiar, doesn't it?

Ugh.

Oh, and in my experience, even with kids who are rough around the edges, if you give respect to them and demand respect from them and if the expectations for classroom behavior are clear and fair, then all you have to do is give them "the look" and they straighten up 9 times out of 10. (I worked with some inner-city teens a couple of summers while I was teaching, so I know whereof I speak!) Teachers who lose control usually aren't meeting one of the conditions I listed, or else the kids just flat don't believe the teacher wants them to succeed. In my experience, these teachers are the ones who have to rely heavily on sticks and carrots.

Fair teachers who care and who both give and demand respect, well, they almost always get it.