HE KNOWS WHEN YOU'VE BEEN BAD OR GOOD. . .

This week, Aleita has chosen to be the hellion of rebellion at her school. Though for the most part, her behavior and attitude has greatly improved in the past few months, there are some days (or weeks, as is the case here) that she opts to push the boundaries with her teachers at her preschool, just to see how far she can go. She has had phone calls from both Chris and me that have brought her to tears at school, but yet she still can't seem to pull it together and act right for very long. We always follow through with punishment at home as well to let her know that we aren't happy with her actions. This week, she has spent every night in her room alone after school, been spanked, lost her toys and her favorite blanket and pajamas, and even had to dine on different food than we did a few nights (On Wednesday, Chris and Maggie had smoked sausage and tater tots - something she loves. She had a PB & J. A different night, Maggie and I had garlic bread with our tortellini, but she was not allowed any garlic bread -- one of her favorite foods. She was quite upset.) Apparently, all these deterrents to her bad behavior were in vain, as she even made a half-hearted escape attempt on Thursday afternoon. After a call from the school, I picked her up at 2PM and after a spank, I took her back to my office, where she promptly fell asleep on the floor under my desk.

However, nothing really seemed to drive home the point that she needed to reform her behavior until this morning. We apparently finally figured out something that will get her attention - - or actually, Santa Claus did. You see, we have an advent house that counts down the days until Christmas. Each day has a small box, and the kids are oh-so-excited to get up each morning and see what one of Santa's elves has left for them in that day's box. We had warned her that this may happen if she didn't change her ways, but she chose not to heed our warnings.

You see, this morning, Santa had his elves leave Aleita a rock in the advent house, while her sister got a package of fruit snacks. You can imagine how well that went over. Aleita stood in stunned disbelief for a moment when she opened the house. (Today was her turn to open the door.) She tried to give the rock to Maggie, who shook her head and said plainly, "that ain't mine - I've been good!" Aleita looked at Maggie hopefully and said, "we can split the fruit snacks, right?" I then informed Aleita that Santa must have seen how bad she was being this week and meant for her to have a rock. (Aleita has told us on many occasions that if you are bad, all you get from Santa is rocks and dirt.) After letting it sink in for a moment, she promptly burst into tears and ran to her room to throw away the rock.

Miraculously, her days was much improved. Now granted, I only worked a half day today and picked her up about 12:30PM, but her teachers said that her behavior was unbelievable good during the time she was there. They said she shared with them the story of the rock in the advent house, as well as the fact that she has been denied partaking of some of her favorites during mealtime, and that we had taken her blanket. (I explained that I took her favorite blanket and wasn't actually denying the child covers at night.)

Aleita is jazzed tonight about the fact that she had a good day and thinks that she has redeemed herself enough to Santa to earn something better in the house tomorrow than a rock or some dirt. I am betting she is right on this one.

We'll see what next week brings though. . . .

Just remember, Santa IS watching.

STANDING UP FOR THE LITTLE GUY

Maggie came in the door from school yesterday wearing a long face. I sighed, wondering what “great news” she had to share with me. During the past few weeks, Maggie has not only had a difficult time remembering to turn in her homework, but also has been rushing through her work at school and skipping directions in the process, resulting in less than stellar grades being brought home. She has lost privileges, including T. V. and her Barbies, but we have yet to see any marked, lasting improvement. From the look on her face, I figured the week was off to another similar start.

“Did you remember to bring home your spelling words?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied.

“What grade did you get on today’s science test? (for which we have been studying for two weeks) I asked.

“A” she answered.

“Did you bring home papers with bad grades on them?” I questioned.

“Nope” she answered, still wearing her down-in-the-dumps expression.

“Then why do you look so sad?” I asked.

She reluctantly reached into her bag and pulled out an envelope. She said, “I have a note for you. I got sent to the principal’s office today. But before you read it, can I tell you what happened?”

I sat down at the kitchen table and closed my eyes for a second, resting my forehead on my hand. Taking a deep breath, I told her to go ahead and explain.

It seems that as she was riding on the bus on the way to school, a boy from her class named Connor started grabbing kids’ papers and throwing them out the open bus window. She told me that he is always calling everybody names and doing mean stuff to people. She said one of her friends started crying because he threw her homework out the window, so Maggie told him to stop, but he didn’t listen. He then proceeded to call her “Miss Afro-puffs” and threw another paper out the window. Apparently at this point, the bus driver told her to sit down, but she had had enough. She got out of her seat and went across the aisle to his, grabbed HIS papers and threw some out of the bus window.

I then took a look at the form she had brought home from school. It pretty much reiterated everything she had told me, but also enlightened me to the fact that if she gets in trouble again on the bus, she will have a 1-day bus suspension. I told her to go up to her room for a little bit and that I would talk to Daddy about it and decide what was to be done. Chris was just getting home, and I explained the situation to him. After I was done, we both looked at each other and started laughing. It shouldn’t have been funny, except it was.

Isn’t this very thing what I try to teach my students in Sunday School each week? I tell them that when someone is being picked on, they have three choices: 1) join in 2) do nothing 3) stand up for someone else. How was I supposed to punish Maggie for doing exactly what I have been promoting?

In the end, we talked to Maggie and explained that we were not upset with her, but that there were better ways to get her point across than to do what she did. She promised to think before she acted next time - - I could tell that just being sent to the principal’s office was enough to shake her up that she didn’t want to visit there again. Her “big” punishment was no dessert that night.

Hey – I bet it’s more than Connor got.