May

30

Crime & Punishment

May 30, 2008 |

My son is in the 7th grade. The transition from grade school to high school has been a challenging one for him. The change in schedules, the additional freedom and with those, the added responsibility. His grades were excellent first quarter but they have steadily dropped ever since.

His father tried to strike a deal, pull up your grades to a certain GPA and I will buy you -insert gratuitous bribe here-. I do not believe in this method but I also don’t believe in challenging my husband in front of my children. So I advised him in private that we would never employ that tactic again, understood? I believe good grades are simply to be expected just as good job performance is regularly expected once one is in the “real world”. A boss does not typically tell you that they will give you a prize if you stop slacking, instead they remind you that will be the only way to keep your job.

So when the latest progress report came out there were two D’s. We haven’t seen anything in the 60’s ever before so to say I was disappointed would have been an understatement. I was pissed. These grades were products of pure laziness on the part of my son and I would tolerate them no more. It was at this moment that all video games, TV watching that wasn’t with the family and computer games were banned until the next report card. In 6 weeks. My son was stunned. Tears ran down his face.

But I have stuck to it. His grades are coming up as a result. He voluntarily gives me regular reports on his progress on different papers and projects he has in school so I consider this a success. The true test will of course be when the last report card comes out. I don’t expect him to suddenly have perfect scores in every subject but I did make it clear that I am never to see anything in the 60’s or lower again.

My son’s friends think I’m being pretty harsh – their parents don’t do the same sorts of things. But I have a newsflash for all of the parents that waste their time trying to be their kids’ friends by not holding them accountable – my son does not hate me for this punishment. He might have strongly disliked me for the first few days but now things are fine. And I have something that a lot of parents don’t have – my son’s respect.

Case in point – he’s going over to a friend’s house after school today. Last night he came to me and asked me if his ban on video games could be lifted for one day, for just the time that he was going to be at his friend’s house. I don’t believe in asking other people to enforce my punishment on my child at their house anyway, but I have to say I was impressed as hell that he asked me about it.

Maybe I really am doing a good job raising my kids.


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. Steph on May 30, 2008 2:08 pm

    girlie, you’re doing a fantastic job with your kids. i agree with what you’ve done here, for what it’s worth. as a society we’ve gotten away from disciplining our children, and we’re paying dearly for it. so many spoiled kids about who think that the world revolves around them….

    hang in there. i missed you during your absence. i, too, sometimes feel very distant from my friends. it’s so hard to keep all friendships going. there is just so little time in our day for fostering each relationship that comes our way, and sometimes we let major frienships slide a bit. it doesn’t mean that they mean any less to us, but it’s not easy to feel close to everyone all the time. i, too, would probably have been hurt by what happened. take heart, though…it does really happen to everyone. ((hugs))

    Steph’s last blog post..Honey Bees…

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