Ode to a Six Year Old

I would be remiss in my blogging if I failed to mention Kyle's latest accomplishment. While he accomplishes many things, as a parent, I am overjoyed when those achievements include behavioral improvements.

Kyle is a very interactive and friendly child. As his teacher tactfully put it, "He would make a wonderful concierge". Unfortunately for Kyle, we are not yet at the point of honing his skills to a particular career. So we have had to work on getting him to do the assigned class work in the assigned class time without "helping" those around him.

When he returned to school from Winter Break, Kyle had been out of class for 3 weeks and his lack of focus highlighted this fact more than ever before. Mrs. Benton had devised a plan that would keep me in the loop by sending home a daily progress report ("Travel Card") that would show a sticker for completed work and what color of behavior day (green=good, yellow=borderline, etc) Kyle had at school. I tried to get him to focus on getting work done by taking away his Playstation time, giving him chores, taking Legos, etc. Nothing worked. Kyle continued to bring home poor travel cards for that first week of January.

After a particularly atrocious travel card, I was livid since Kyle didn't seem to be making any effort to fix his behavior. In a complete fury, I sent him to his room and told him that Dad and I would discuss what his consequences for not completing his work would be. Michael and I were stumped, but finally decided that if he was having a problem being too chatty then the best solution would be to deny him people to chat with.

When I retrieved Kyle from his room to announce the verdict, he was in tears. He sat on the couch and sobbed about how bad he felt that we would be embarrassed to have him behave so badly at school. (gulp) I got all choked up and glanced over at Michael in time to see him trying very hard not to crack up. (rolls eyes) Apparently, we were not on the same page emotionally.

I told Kyle that he would be in his room for the rest of the night. He would eat in there and could only come out to use the restroom with permission. He went into the room and I closed the door.

There was about 5 minutes of silence before the realization that he could not come out at ALL hit home. The wailing and gnashing of teeth began in ernest. He wailed about how sorry he was and how he would never do it again, etc. I was dying. I absolutely want to believe my kids even if I know what they are saying is total baloney. However, Michael and I took turns going in and reminding him of why he was there and how sorry we were that he was missing family time that night. He would knock on his door until we opened it and then tried to show us beautiful pictures he had drawn for us. ANYTHING to get someone to talk to him.

And he really was missing out. Kaitlyn came over to watch Kane while I turned the crib into a co-sleeper (and I'm pretty sure Kaitlyn is still traumatized by Kyle's ordeal). We ordered pizza & he ate it sitting on the floor of his room. It was Marian's first day of school at Aveda and she had lots to talk about. Overall, it was a perfect night for maximum impact of behavior consequences.

The next day....Kyle brought home a perfect travel card, and then another one the next day, and another, and another. We told him that we would get him the Playstation video game he had been begging for if he could earn 15 perfect travel cards.

I am very happy to report that on February 2nd, he handed me all 15 cards and we ordered his video game.

VICTORY, I thought....... and then yesterday he came home with all his work done, but he had his green AND yellow card taken away. His teacher wrote on the card, "Just too happy today". So, he lost the Playstation for the afternoon.

As I put him to bed last night, I reminded him that if he did not have a perfect travel card when he came home on Friday that he would not get to play the new video game that would be waiting for him. He promised he would have a great day.

Hopefully, today went well....

UPDATE: Who rocks?? The kid rocks!! Kyle is happily playing Disney's Pure. :)