Respect and Dicapline

A.:

You have posted before about discipline for your children.

Rules and consequences MUST be consistent. If he doesn't get in trouble for rolling his eyes at you while at home - then he thinks he can get away with it at school.

Make a list of rules and the consequences for breaking the rules. Do the EXACT SAME THING each time he misbehaves...it MUST be consistent. If it's not consistent then he will be wondering what hoop he needs to jump through.

Don't forget to catch him being good. Reward him for good behavior as well. If he behaves in school for the week - he gets a treat that he normally wouldn't get - for example - my son wanted a reward for bringing in A's on his report card - his reward was dinner and games at Chuck E. Cheese. He got tokens for each A from Chuck E. Cheese as well...

CONSISTENCY!! CONSISTENCY!! CONSISTENCY!! That is what works.
The minute you start yelling or screaming - your child has won. It sucks because we all yell - darn it!! but take a deep breath and keep control. Reiterate what it is you want and expect. You must also be the role model. You don't want him to roll his eyes? Sorry - you don't either. It's not do as I say not as I do.

Consequences. Swift and certain.

I like your phrase "I love him, but I don't like him right now".

I recently had a convo with my 24yo. I told him that "I love you as my son. I love you as part of my family. I love you as a friend. But I do not love you as a part of society...I believe you are dropping the ball on that one. You need to get off your tush & take care of ____".

I know this sounds harsh, but we were having an honest discussion & I felt it was imperative to openly share my thoughts with him. He's 24 & still has a tendency to fall into bad habits/patterns leftover from teenhood. & what's funny is that my Mom had sent him a PM on FB just the night before about his choices!! What timing!

Anyway, when he mentioned Gma's PM during our convo, I just laughed! I used humor to diffuse his anger with us....as in, "OMG, seriously? Gma told you the same thing I'm telling you right now? OMG, no way!" While I was saying it, I grabbed him by the shoulders & shook him while I acted like a rag doll being shook. That round of humor is what it took to get him to open up & listen....well, while he was saying, "Good God, Mom. Do you have to be such a freak?" LOL.

Sooo, we talked....& he started moving forward again. The rest of the week was productive, & I'm happy. He is such a better person when he's moving.....

Moving back to your ?.....use humor. When you see him do this at home, hand him a mirror. Tell him to "make that face again & see how you like it". Seriously, toss the behavior right back into his face......& then follow thru with demonstrations on how to be respectful. Use humor thruout the process & he'll turn around quickly. :)

First, give yourself a break..... it is not easy being a mom and every day is not full of roses. We all have bad days.

To get respect you need to give respect... respect is earned.

As for discipline, if taking things away does not get the behavior you are desiring to instill.... then try another approach. How about positive rewards?

I also sub at an elementary school and we've found that some children LOVE the positive reward system. It does help them with the behavior, it also helps them feel value and that they are earning something ( ex: trip to treasure box, lunchn with a teacher, etc) Most of the time, the student has a behavior chart that travels with him/her to each teacher. Each teacher signs off with smiley face or notes behavior issues. At the end of the day, the chart is copied, sent home for a parent to review. Some children love to see how many star stickers they can earn in 1 day. (3 stars = small trinket, 0 stars = nothing). As for the teachers, we find something positive that child is doing, no matter how small, to make sure the child knows we care and we want them to get the end reward.

It takes a lot of patience. It sounds like your child is doing well with the teacher but maybe not with aides? He needs to learn that the aides are there to assist the teacher and him. Many children need structure and if a sub (even sub for a regular aide) comes in, it throws the behavior off because a sub who is not there regularly does not know or understnad the whole situation.

I only sub at one school and all my jobs are pre arranged. I know all the children, I stick to 1-2 grade levels vs trying to do them all so that I can be the best I can be at the levels I am in.

Communicate with the teachers, let them know you are working on this. They may have some ideas for you as well. Make sure you communicate with your son and find something positive no matter how small and point it out to him. He needs to know he is doing something right and not all wrong.

Best wishes to you.

I think the other suggestions from the moms are great! Definitely things we use in our house :)

There is a certain level of, well, he is a child and getting older and to expect blind obedience and a good attitude is - alot. Sounds like too much to me. I would classify that as the level I HOPE my children attain, but realistically don't expect them too. They're human - so we expect them to screw up, make bad choices, and experience the same emotions that we do as adults. They're just alot less able to handle it since they're kids - which is why they have parents to teach, coach and guide them through it.

What I'm hearing from your post is that you want him to be good, undefined, do what's he's told, without asking questions or expressing discontent, and be happy about it. I feel like that's not unrealistic (how often are you able to do that?), but would be detrimental to him as an adult - or even a teenager. Do you really want a teenager that does as he's told without questioning or critically thinking about it? Without the freedom to express disagreement? That sets one up for huge problems with really big consequences - including falling in with controlling and abusive people.

I feel like you've expressed that he's disrespectful and sometimes contemptuous with authority. If that's true, that is something that is completely out of bounds and not tolerated at our house :) However, as another mentioned if you want that to cease and desist you have to be willing to cut it out of yourself either - no eye rolling, sarcasm, pithy retorts, etc. It's hard. Took us a long time to quit it after 30 years of practice...especially when it's encouraged and rewarded by our culture. We ask the kids to go to their rooms until they can gain self control of their tongue, apologize to the offended party, then they stay in their room in silence for the number of minutes as years (eg, 4 YO stays 4 min, 10 YO stays 10...) When we first started the stubborness led them to refuse to come out of the room for 1.5 hours..... 2 yrs later we're down to immediate apologies with time served.

Good luck mama!

Everybody else gave good advice. One thought I had was to ask him why he is dissing the helpers. Maybe he will say something that will be an ah-ha moment for you and maybe not but it's worth a shot.

totally been there see if the school has a counclor he can talk to their may be something else going on