Wednesday, May 13, 2009

slap out of ideas........

At one time in my life I wanted to have just boys. No girls. I was a girl and I know what they are like and I did not want to raise them. When we found out we were going to have a girl..I thought okay we can try again for a boy the next time. Don't get me wrong I love Katie with every ounce of my being but I really felt I would not be the best person for the job to raise girls.

When I found out that we were having Jack I cried. I was so excited. We were going to have one of each. Since Katie came first I was happy with one of each and we felt we were done. Now all I had to do was worry about raising them. Jack is a very smart boy. He thinks outside the box unlike any three year old I have ever met.

Lately we have had a lot of problems with him and I truly do not know what to do with him, neither does his school. He refuses to listen and only wants to do things his way. He can be incredibly difficult which is not conducive when you have 12 3 year olds. When I talk about Jack thinking outside the box here is an example. If the class is doing something that Jack is not interested in he will intentionally do something wrong so he has to sit in the "thinking chair" this way he does not have to participate. What three year old mind thinks this way.

This week alone he peed on another child on purpose, won't leave his pants up, was sent to the directors office where I was called at work, he bit another child, and just refuses to cooperate in class. I have taken ALL of his toys away. His room has a bed, dresser and empty shelves where toys used to be. I grounded him to his room where he could only leave to potty and eat dinner.

Tonight he was not allowed to watch TV and we have told him if he is not good he will stay with the neighbors at their house and we will go to the beach next week without him. Totally out of ideas and mentally whipped I went another avenue. I got out paper and pens and we worked on his numbers and shapes with him. If he wants one on one attention from me I am going to make him work for it.

I still believe that Jack is very intelligent and that his teachers are not going to be able to challenge him enough. So here we are I wrote out the #'s 1-5 on a piece of paper and then did little grouping of dots with the same numbers and asked him to match them. I would expect a 3 year old to count the numbers in the groups and then there to be a pause as to which # went with each grouping. For Jack there was no pause not even one long enough to see if he was counting the dot groupings. He blurted out the # and them quickly pointed to that #. Thinking I made it too easy I made groupings and of triangles and circles and asked him to match them up as to the quantity.

After that little 20 minutes exercise, which is great for Jack because they though he had an attention problem, I feel like they are not challenging him enough. I believe in his three year old mind he is bored with the class and the teachers that he feels he does not have to listen to them. I am completely out of ideas as to what to tell the school. There are parts of Katie's kindergarten prep exercises Jack does just as well if not better.

Some things he still needs help on but some one on one time I am sure he will achieve it. My problem now is making him understand that he has to listen to his teachers and that he is not in charge. I am out of ideas. Some days after he is asleep I just want to cry. I feel that in some way I am failing him. I can't get him to behave in school I must be doing something wrong.

Hopefully some day soon I will have an epiphany that can help him. Not sure why I was blessed with such a difficult boy.

TTFN

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