Repeated detentions

[Remmy123]

At the end of my tether really with my son's behaviour at school.

This week alone:

1. Detention fir chatting in class
2. Detention and phone confiscated as it rang in class and should be switched off.
3. Had chewing gum in mouth when walking into a classroom as he couldn't find a bin on the way.

Each detention we are now banning him from his beloved pc for that night.

He cannot have one good week I'm finding it all quite stressful as I am / was total opposite at school I just cannot get my head around why he finds it so hard.

He thinks his teachers hate him and says it's never his fault 😬

He is year 8

Soon he will be out on report I suspect

Any words of wisdom?

Thanks

Correct - he doesn't think it's his fault as I have to explain time again the reasoning behind the punishment.

As a secondary school teacher I would be more concerned about the impact he is having on other students learning rather than his own. I understand your concern that you want him to do well and not waste his time but I can assure you if he is recieving this level of detentions he is wasting a LOT of the teachers time, most definately this behaviour is more wide spread than the ones you know about.

Yep and I tell him that it's not fair on other students who want to progress.

It's a frustrating situation.

@woodlands01

As a secondary school teacher I would be more concerned about the impact he is having on other students learning rather than his own. I understand your concern that you want him to do well and not waste his time but I can assure you if he is recieving this level of detentions he is wasting a LOT of the teachers time, most definately this behaviour is more wide spread than the ones you know about.

Unusual for a secondary teacher not to have heard of these kind of schools - you can get detention for talking in a hallway in some of the schools our way - and also to use the spelling 'definately'

OP, I think he was right to be reprimanded, but if he's otherwise doing ok and has good friendships, I'd only punish at home on top of a detention if it was for being actively unkind or dangerous. Leave it be, and don't worry he's going to 'waste his life' because he chewed gum at school.

He is a persistent offender.The OP says he never has a good week. I think it's time for a visit to the school so that you can have a clearer picture of what exactly is going on.
You can have a report from every teacher and find out where his trouble spots are and why. You can work on a strategy with the school
Does he need assistance with his work? Is he isolated? Is he hanging around with wrong crowd?
You need to find out these things.

OverTheRubicon- I have certainly heard of 'these kind of schools'. It is unclear from the OP that her DS attends one of them. I know if I give a detention for chat in class then it is because it is absolutely repeated, persistent behaviour and the child is engaging in annoying low level disruption and I think lots of schools are like this. Sorry for the mispelling - I am a Maths teacher and have been in school from 7am til 8:30 this evening!

I have the same with my boy (same age)
I think the constant detentions just become routine in the end.

Thanks again all.

I should add he does get good notes in his book, so today he got 2 good notes but the detention for the gum.

So he can be good then has many blips in between!

@CatonMat yep I think they lose effectiveness in the end.

My DD was in a strict school up until last summer, virtually impossible to avoid detentions as minor issues were instant detentions or isolation. We avoided the stricter schools as I felt that they would not be a good fit for DD but the change of head at the same time DD started the school changed the ethos. DD was very demotivated and disengaged due to the inevitability of falling foul of the innumerable rules. Very few children managed to avoid numerous detentions.

As a teacher I'd say it's largely his age: for boys hormones hit hard normally from the middle of y8 to the end of y9.

How quickly he learns to take responsibility for his actions and how to respond to sanctions depends in part on how you support the school.

I've worked in some great schools and a crap one. All the good schools had the rules your DS has broken and would have given detentions for breaking the rules.

I hope he grows out of it soon

[quote Remmy123]@SockFluffInTheBath you are absolutely right.

I banned him last night too for the whole night I also confiscated his phone.

It just worried me with the 'wanting to kill myself' 😬[/quote]
If he seems otherwise happy - and he sounds like despite the detentions at school he is ok there - then his ‘wanting to kill myself’ stance is more likely his way of trying to get your sympathy. Teens are very good at this because they know parents will be petrified that they mean it and will bend over backwards not to upset them any further.

He sounds like a bit of a lad, pushing the boundaries, challenging the school rules, mild displays of defiance. The choices you have are to find a new school that will tolerate his attitude to rules, or try to get him to realise that no matter how petty the rules may seem, if he chooses to break them he will have to accept the consequences. I very much doubt he would want to change schools despite saying it makes him want to kill himself as it would mean losing his friends.
Remind him - if you are caught with your phone on in school again it will be confiscated. (specify a time scale). If you are kept in detention you will be grounded that night too.

I think firstly, I'd frame this to myself as "he's making mistakes" rather than "his behaviour's terrible". Self-regulation is a skill that has to be acquired, and it sounds like he's not 100% there yet (nor are many teens!)

I think I'd be trying to give him some sense of autonomy back in solving the problem. Yes, he's in a strict school with lots of rules, but that doesn't mean that getting in trouble is inevitable. Can you maybe talk to him about coming up with plans as to how to stop these things happening again?

For example, what could he do to make sure his phone doesn't go off in class? e.g. always check it's switched off when the bell rings at the end of lunch break.

Similarly, what could he do if he can't find a bin for his gum? e.g. spit it out into the wrapper or a tissue, pop it in your bag to put in the bin later.

For chatting in class, you'd need to get him to analyse what's going on. Is it a case of "How can you avoid getting dragged into chatting in class when your mates are?" Or, is he the one that starts chatting and why (e.g. is he bored), in which case the question is "How do you resist the temptation to start chatting when the lesson's dull?"

It doesn't seem like the school's carrot and stick (emphasis on the stick) approach is working, so maybe trying a different tack will help him.

I hope you said to him 'no, school don't want you to kill yourself, they want you to remember to turn your phone off, not chew gum and not talk in lessons when you should be working.'

I don't think the detentions are the issue with his dramatic reaction to getting them. People on here are saying 'OMG a detention for chewing gum is really strict!' Banning him from his computer for the night for getting a detention is probably what he is really kicking against. In his head, it's the teacher making him lose his computer access, not merely giving him a detention.

My boy will get a half hour detention and not go.
The repercussions of this is that it will be increased to an hour.
He just shrugs.
I think it's almost like a status symbol to not care.

Isn’t chewing gum banned on school premises altogether? It should be.

I think I wouldn't punish further as such but I would demand a discussion about it.
My DC would say that's just as painful.
I would be discussing why school has these rules and that in life they need to deal with this.

Thanks everyone it is incredibly helpful to read all of your responses.

I think I am on the right path. I'm explaining that all of those incidences are avoidable (why didn't you put chewing gum i to paper and then in your bag/ why did you even have chewing gum, etc) he seemed genuinely perplexed as to why he couidnt just use the bin in the classroom 🙄

I just hope that this will stop soon and he just needs to grow up a bit!!

I’m sure he will get the message eventually!

@EllieNBeeb

To be honest, chewing gum? The school sounds like a nightmare. Is it one of those awful zero tolerance academies? Sounds like they really know how to put a kid off education.

If you think back to when you were at school and all the damage spitting gum out, sticking it to the underside of of desks or even putting it in har did.

You may rethink about its just chewing gum.

Sorry, I should have said I’m sure he’ll get the message soon not eventually!

Op - As an alternative to banning the PC does your son have an allowance, my son is same Yr8 and he gets a bonus at the end of each block (6 weeks basically) if he avoids detentions, he lost it twice in Yr7 but so far this year none (it's costing me a fortune ).

@1099 maybe I couid try his approach .. whatever it takes!!

The teacher wouldn't have known he was chewing gum unless he was obvious about it would they? We used to gave to go round at lunchtime scraping chewing gum from underneath desks if found chewing it which seemed fair enough.

You will get people on here telling you the school rules are too tough and that is the issue. This is because we make endless excuses for shit behaviour and then complain when our dc's lessons are constantly disrupted etc etc. Schools are supposed to be places of learning and be safe. Many kids don't get the chance to learn as they would like because of constant 'low level' chatting and messing about.