With one week left of school, Nate seems to be going out with more than a bang – it’s more like a behavior blow up.
Each day, he and his Pre-K classmates start with a blue day, which basically means great behavior. If they have behavior troubles, like not listening to the teachers or being mean to friends, their color turns to green, yellow or red, depending on how many issues they’ve had that day. (We tell Nate to think of blue like a home run, green as a base hit, yellow as a foul ball and red as a strike out.)
For the school year, Nate has actually earned more blue and green days than yellow and red days combined so these past few days have been tough on all of us. (Even Nia told me today that she was wearing blue so Nate will get a blue day.)
For the most part, he gets yellow or red due to listening issues like not being quiet when he’s supposed to or playing while he should be resting/learning. But one of his recent not listening days went further because it involved him losing a friend’s football on the school’s roof because he didn’t stop throwing it up there when the teacher asked him to.
His punishments for his actions include no video games, no baseball playing (we’ve actually removed all baseball gear/toys/cards from his room), he wrote an I’m sorry card to the football friend and will be using his piggy bank money to buy him a new ball, and today he was not allowed to wear pajamas to his class’ pj day. He is always so saddened at his punishments but today’s was especially hard. He saw all of his friends in their pajamas, even a few who had yellow or red days yesterday like he did, but he was not in his.
I feel so bad about it. I just don’t know what else to do since we’ve used all the other typical punishments (that usually turn his behavior immediately around because he wants to earn his privileges back). I’m worried we are being too strict but I’m also worried about his behavior when he gets to Kindergarten. Right now, his color coded days of Pre-K influence my moods so heavily. What in the world am I going to do when he’s called into the principal’s office? That will be a red (fire-red) day all around for sure.
Hope to see blue (or even green!) today.
Tags: behavior struggles, punishment
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