Reply to How do I handle this? Teacher gave kid F for questionable reasons. (Long)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here. Okay, I see the point about being the second to burp. I'll be sure to work with my child so I can ensure he never again engages in Defiant & Disrespectful Burping (which was surely his goal).

I would bet, though, that if Sarah Sweetpea burped immediately after her lab mate did the same, she wouldn't have been told to sit for the last five minutes and lost 20% of the grade. This is a good lesson for my kid, though, in that he is annoying and therefore will be punished more aggressively. [/quote]

OP, your goal is not to get your kid through childhood with the fewest possible consequences for his ADHD, because his ADHD isn't going to disappear when he graduates. Your job right now is to help him develop the skills he will need to manage his ADHD as an adult so that he's not getting fired from jobs for cracking jokes inappropriate during a client meeting and getting divorced because his spouse can't tolerate his unwillingness to take responsibility for himself. Man up and be a better parent.[/quote]

I agree with you that my goal is not to get him through with fewest consequences.  I work extensively with him on developing skills to manage his ADHD (including educating him that judgments stick), and believe it or not, he is very much held accountable for his behavior.  While "man up and be a better parent" is not that helpful (in that I'm not a man, and I think we all strive to be better parents), I appreciate your thoughts.[/quote]

So what are the consequences going to be here? He was disrespectful to his teacher, he goofed around so badly during the lab that he got a D, and then when asked, he lied to you about it. In your original post, you said:

[quote]He says he was telling funny stories with his group during lab but he wasn't doing anything "wrong". (He has plenty of experience reflecting upon and admitting to poor behavior). I ask him if she asked him to stop. No. I asked him if he was disruptive. No. I asked him if he completed the lab steps and did the work. Yes. I ask him to seriously think about it and what might have resulted in an F. He is devastated because he really believes he was doing nothing different from others, finished all the work, cleaned his materials, etc.
[/quote]

Except that wasn't true. The teacher did tell them to stop burping and he did it anyway. He didn't complete all of the lab steps and didn't clean up his materials because he had to sit out the last five minutes. Even if she didn't say anything to him at the time about saying he would smack the kid (or if he didn't remember), he remembers that he had to sit out for the last five minutes of the lab and didn't actually finish as a result (and if he doesn't, you may have bigger neurological issues you need to be looking into). You asked your kid for an explanation, and he lied. This is something you need to hold him accountable for.

You also need to acknowledge that his current coping strategies are not working. It's not just about this class, it's about the fact that all of his teachers are reporting to you that he is struggling with managing his symptoms and doing what he needs to do. Just because he's not actively disrupting other students (although any time his teachers need to take away from teaching to address his behavior arguably does disrupt class for the rest of them) doesn't mean that it's not a problem that he's not paying attention and is doing things he's not supposed to (such as playing on his ipad). He needs better strategies or school is going to get worse for him.[/quote]

OP, I want to add one more thing to this, because as I said earlier, I'm in your shoes as well as having been in your son's. I know this stuff is hard. If you're anything like me, you probably feel like so much of your life is tied up in your child's ADHD, and having them screw up like this, seeing they need even more from you than they're already getting, can be exhausting and defeating. Just once, could we catch a break and have our kids just have a smooth year, or even just a few smooth months, where things are going well and we don't need to be constantly managing them. Not to mention that, when stuff like this happens, it can bring up all kinds of fears about whether our kids are going to learn to manage this on their own, will they be one of the ADHD success stories, or will they be one of the people who bounces around from job to job and relationship to relationship, never truly getting their act together. I really do get the desire to try to sweep this under the rug, to make it be about something other than your kid, because if you can, then this can be a successful quarter with good grades and no issues and you'll finally have caught a break. I know this doesn't give you anything to make it easier, but I realize I've been pretty blunt and I wanted you to know that I also deeply empathize with where you're at. I'd be struggling with it too.[/quote]

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