Let me preface with I couldn’t decide if this went in 5 – 8, Special Needs or School. I chose school because I think a lot of it is universal kid school stuff. We haven’t been treating him differently, so I don’t want to handle it differently either unless it really merits it.
Malachai started off the year fantastically. He did his work, he behaved in class, it was peachy.
Over the last few weeks, he has started slacking off on his homework – I posted about that previously – and he’s started to slack off in class as well. More and more papers come home with “Did Not Complete” or “Incomplete” or “Did Not Follow Directions” on them.
Today he had a bad day. When I picked him up he was crying, and his teacher handed me two number strips that were just decimated. He cut them in half, cut shapes out of them, I mean, it really looks like he went to town on them. I have no clue when he had the time to do this because I know for a fact the entire class is well supervised and his day is scheduled down to the minute. I guess he could have done it while they were supposed to be cutting, but he is extra supervised because he wont sit in a chair; He kind of hovers next to it and it makes the teacher nervous while he is using scissors.
She mentioned he started slacking off, I said yah, I know, he’s done it at home too (which she knows b/c of homework) and that I had wanted to try to plan a meeting to figure something out if it didn’t improve over the next few weeks. Because of the cutting of the number lines she asked if we could meet. Sure! She asked if mornings were best, I said yah, but she wanted 8AM… we’re (one of us is) dropping Dorian off at that hour – I said we could do it at maybe 8:05 at the earliest, probably closer to 8:10. She asked if 10:30 was better, I said yep, as long as it’s not a pain for you. Thats when they go to special, so we’re meeting her at 10:30 next Wednesday to figure something out.
When I ask him why he isn’t doing the work, he waffles between “it’s boring” and “it’s super hard Mommy” whichis cute, but not a good reason.
I don’t know what to do. It isn’t a question of sitting down with him. The homework… the writing nights he does because I have started printing it out in that dashed font. The cut/paste he does sort of half assed and did not do at all this week. He lost his worksheet this week, but did it last week. He never studies the words with me on Thursday, though if I quiz him throughout the night, one word at a time, I have about a 25% chance he’ll spell it for me vs. ignore me.
Forget the homework. What the hell do I do about class?
