The Kid Whisperer Podcast Featuring Scott Ervin and Pat Kiely: Episode 12
Topics in this episode include:
I am a kindergarten teacher, and I have some extreme behaviors in my room. I usually connect well with kids, but there is one student this year that I am really struggling with. I raised my own kids using Love and Logic and I think I use many strategies naturally. However, this year I have really been struggling especially with 27 kindergarten students. I have dived back in to learning about Classroom Management (after raising 5 kiddos and teaching for 20 years). I have started the Whole Brain Teaching model for goal setting and such, which has been fun and my kids love it, but for my really tough ones it doesn't work. This particular kid's behaviors are super sweet and we connect well, and then he flips a switch-- often there is no warning or trigger, calls me a mother f*****, son of a B, etc...stabbed me with a pencil, throws anything he can get his hands on, took a metal door knob he found and hit the social worker with it and then threw it into the wall leaving a dent, etc. (After that one incident I would not let him back into my room, for the safety of the other kids- I was told that is exclusionary practice and not allowed. It is like he is literally two people. He doesn't like or connect with peers, only wants adults. This is just a taste of what the year has been like.)
I teach fourth grade. I am departmentalized with one teaching partner. I am responsible for ELA, and she teaches math and science. We have both noticed that one of our students "loses" his papers almost on a daily basis. He will receive the paper in the morning and be asked to take it out later in the day, only to find that it has "disappeared,” in spite of the fact that students have color coded folders for each subject, and were taught at the beginning of the year to put every paper in a folder and to not have loose papers in their desks.
He is doing this intentionally, to get attention. I know this because when he is asked to stay in at recess to find the paper, he will find it almost immediately. It is 99% of the time in his desk. One afternoon (after recess, so I couldn't have him find it at recess), I was extremely frustrated because I had given him a paper the day before to organize his writing, and I was pulling him with another small group of students to the table to help them with their writing. They needed the paper, and I asked them to bring it. He said he "lost it.” I sent him back to his seat to locate it, and he "couldn't find it.” I told him not to come back to my table until he had it. He continued "looking,” being disruptive, trying to gain more attention. He did get the attention of some of his classmates, but not me. He kept coming up to me (since I ignored him and continued working with the other kids), stating he still "couldn't find it,” but I continued to repeat, "Please don't come back here until you have the paper." The day ended, and he didn't "find it.” After students left, I looked in his desk, and of course, the paper was in his reading folder the whole time! What can I do to stop him from continuing to do this? Thank you.
My son is 10 years old and about to turn 11. We have a great relationship with him, and besides some minor behavior issues (occasionally forgetting to clean up a mess, losing homework, getting mad at his younger sister over silly fights), we really don't have any major problems. People like to remind me to "just wait until you hit the teenage years!" and tell me how awful he's going to be when he gets to be a bit older. What can I do now, proactively, to make sure that his teenage years go as relatively smoothly as his first 10 years have been?