Last week, on only the sixth day of school, I received a note from Tanner's teacher. Tanner had been misbehaving, but not just misbehaving, willfully being disobedient. He actually told his teacher he was "choosing to be naughty," and then did the opposite of everything he was asked for the day, each time looking at her, waiting to see how she'd react. She asked me to please talk to him about it. This is the beginning of school. Isn't everything supposed to go smoothly for a while? And we've never had any problems with Tanner in two years of preschool or kindergarten. We have spent his whole cognizant life trying to teach him that he has a choice how he acts, and that no one makes you act or feel a certain way, in order to help him control his temper. So apparently, he's decided to choose to be naughty.
Well, he soon learned that choosing to be naughty is also choosing to march back to school the next morning with your mom (how embarrassing! What kind of a mom would do that?) and look your teacher in the face with a sincere apology and promise to behave better. It is also choosing to not play video games for a week. He found that he really didn't like the choice.Unfortunately, he also likes to negotiate consequences to a level that he can deal with in order to disobey and not suffer too much. At church on Sunday, I told him that if he walked out the door, he was without his gameboy for the rest of the day. He started bargaining, asking if I could make it 2 hours? 3 hours? how about just the xbox for the day?. He hadn't even broken the rule yet, and here he is making deals, deciding how much punishment would be worth the action. I'm in for it!
Tanner's also been full of quotables lately. To Jamie, his single aunt who is dating someone: "I think you'll date him until you like him enough to want to marry him. Then he'll dump you." Good thing he's cute.
2 comments:
lol.... oh Jodee!!!! You are in for it! At this stage I have to say that Tanner being cute will get him pretty far...lol. The only advise I can give you from having a child who likes to go against all that is expected is to be consistant, don't back down and choose consequences that fit the bad choice. Hopefully you wont have to go through all the options and have nothing left to offer like us....LOL! Good luck and tell Tanner Aunt Ashlee says to PLEASE be good!!!!
Love ya!
You forgot to mention that he painfully reminded me that he knows he'll dump me because that is what all the other boys have done. I guess someone had to be honest with me so why not Tanner :)
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