miserable and confused

[thriftychic]

my 12 year old son has this morning been looking for the gaffa tape so that he can tape his mouth up in maths, so that he wont talk and get in trouble :(

this is after the teacher has put him on report for constantly talking and stopping people learning. the card came home last night saying that he repeatedly turned around in his chair talking despite being told and despite having been put on report . That i should look in his book . that its unacceptable.

His behaviour and his self esteem have been awful for over a year now. I am caught between thinking this is my son turned into a really awful teenager and he needs more discipline and feeling that there is something really wrong.

camhs have assessed him , but really the service has been utter crap and made him worse ! all they could come up with was lower than normal iq and slow processing . they have offered us 'strategies' to manage his behaviour.

discipline wise , i have tried everything. He breaks his heart over the consequences i give him and goes into total meltdown. I always see it through but he just does exactly the same thing again like he was never punished.

most of his year group dislike him . His only so called friends are some year ten lads that he sees in the music room. (goes there at lunch to play the drums and after school)

this is my baby, i love him, im gutted and i dont know what to do.

Have a Hug.

I'm not clear here - are you giving him consequences at home for what happens at school? If that is the case then it is possible that he is not making the connection between the punishment and what he has done.

I would be asking to see the teacher and asking what she is doing to try to address the problems of him turning round/chatting etc; the situation is happening "on her time" so she needs to be the one to do it.

My son has ASD, but I think this relates to any child. If you want to improve behaviour the tried and tested way is to reward the good and ignore the bad (where you can). So does the teacher praise him for when he is sitting still and paying attention? Could he have a positive reward system so if he sits well he earns extra time eg in the music room. A purely negative consequence system doesn't really work as you then get into the 'well i'm going to get told off anyway I might as well not bother' frame of mind.

If he has social difficulties he might not respond to social discipline eg being told off in front of your mates is not a big deal if you don't care / don't have mates.

My son (much younger) has a token system and earns rewards and that works really well. But his rewards are tangible things which are important to him eg computer time etc

They can also make environmental changes - move where he sits, which way he faces etc

Does he have problems concentrating to start with? If so the expectation for him being able to sit still may be much lower than for most 12 year olds.

thanks for the hug, much needed !!
I normally punish him for his behaviour at home and leave school behaviour to school.

so far this year i have spoken to only a couple of his teachers who say that the problem is that he doesnt do his work and talks and messes around constantly.
so far they have just been telling him off i think but now the maths teacher has decided to put him on report. This has coincided with some particularly bad behaviour at home.

I told him that he would only be able to use our computer if he earned it with good behaviour including good comments on the school report card.
He says hes thick and he cant help his behaviour and that i take everything away and wreck his life. when i explain that things get taken away because of his own doing he wont accept it. I feel like hes on another planet.

at the weekend he was in trouble for sneaking his mobile back after i'd took it off him and going on the internet with it , weve had all this numerous times now , looking at porn on it and using up credit so i was mad with him. He had a total meltdown , got violent with me etc and then spent 2 hours sobbing that he didnt know why hes like this etc etc only to sneak the phone again from my bag and go on the internet again a couple of hours later.
He also lies all the time. he lies to other kids trying to make himself seem cool but its OTT.
nothing i say or do changes anything.

thrifty my elder son does what you describe at home (except for the mobile bit - he doesn't have one) which is to say he's stupid and go into a meltdown when confronted with something he hasn't done or lied about, and also to try and sneak onto computer/ds if he possibly can rather than do something we've asked him.

He has no SN as far as we know, and only a few behaviour issues at school, and his work is average. He is not that popular but gets by. He is quite enthusiastic about school and loves chatting to us, so we know he wants to be popular, just doesn't quite know how to go about it.

After many situations where we told him off for bad behaviour (at school in Yr 5/6) and at home with his siblings/homework/rudeness etc we decided on following strategy which does seem to be working

LOTS OF PRAISE AND ESTEEM BUILDING. We try and remark on things we like about his behaviour instead of telling him off about bad stuff. We set boundaries, but we don't dwell so much on consequences as much as making it clear that we want him to keep to boundaries, and immediately thanking him for doing chores, praising him for organisation, encouraging him to talk nicely. We go over the top on the encouragement because we find that works, rather than emphasising where he has failed. He knows he has weaknesses and it is very easy for him to fall back into a default position where he just gives up and says I'm Stupid and Bad aren't I and wallow in an emotional morass, screaming and crying for hours. That gets us nowhere. He was punished in school recently, and we made it clear to him that although we were "on his side" over the incident and understood why it had happened, there was Zero Tolerance for that sort of behaviour in the grownup world, and he had to go through with punishment. We said as much to school.

Talking out of turn could be a nervous response to not knowing what to do with himself in class, and a form of attention seeking. My child also exhibited this in Year 5/6, he is better now. Could you ask teacher to try some strategies so he can be better engaged rather than just expecting him to listen, if he plain CAN'T. Surely it is in their interests to help him rather than him being disruptive. Some children learn in different ways. You could also practice "listening" and "taking turns" in conversation at home, it is never too late.

Just to recap, we had the situation where we told him off many many times and explained that some behaviour was not acceptable, but it made absolutely no difference to his behaviour in school at any rate. It was as if he was programmed to behave in a certain "silly" way. It took us about two years to see that really we were getting nowhere by telling him off, and it was the being encouraging and boundary setting in a positive way that helped. I think he didn't want to be hasselled but he also longed to know what he was meant to be doing, when, in very simple positive language. ie: homework was at x time, computer was at x time, chores were x y and z, chatting time was x time, downtime was x time, bedtime was x time. And no nagging or harassing in between.

thanks :)

does he have difficulties with maths? possibly he's messing about and not listening as he's finding it hard to understand what the teacher is saying?

yes , he finds it really hard. every term they move him down a group. He is now in the second from the bottom group and hes worried about moving to the bottom group as he said its full of idiots and scruffs (his words) said he will refuse to go if they put him in there. everytime they move him he feels more crap.
I think he is finding all his work hard. he got 4's and a 5 in his sats at primary. No one at primary ever said he was struggling and he was always perfectly behaved .

have you tried a feelings book......you both have a book and record anything in it that made you feel good or unhappy....(more good though in adults book) at a certain time in the evening you swap books and read them, then you spend 10 mins talking about what was in each others books and how things could have been handled differently if at all.....i did this with my ds and his behaviour improved........he could read back in his book and realise that ie; him shouting at me made me sad....him making me a coffee made me so happy and proud, etc......your ds could record his feeling about his school day as well, sorry if this sounds a silly idea but wanted to share what worked for us

thanks , i'll try anything !

When you say that he has a lower IQ than normal, how low do you mean. Is it within the average range but the low end or below 80. Although you can't get extra help with a low IQ it maybe an indicator that he needs extra support.

so either he's found the transition to 2ndary enormously difficult, and/or his primary school overmarked him. difficult. v good idea from davids about helping him express his feelings in a low key way.

i dont know how low an IQ , they just said not low enough to diagnose anything.
could primary have overmarked in year 6 ? i was led to believe the sats got sent away and marked independently.

as my child is only 7 I don't know much about the year 6 sats and possibly I am assuming he is underachieving academically when that isn't correct. agree with agnes that some sort of change to his environment might help - also possibly some sort of discreet fiddle toy might help him?