Thursday, May 24, 2007

Fighting

Bubbles came home Tuesday with a discipline referral from the principal's office for fighting. It said that she spit on and bit another student. Holy Cow! Not what I wanted to hear, and quite unexpected.

I asked her what happened. She told me that she was hanging upside down on the monkey bars and her shirt came up so she got down and fixed her shirt. But one of her friends came over and pulled her shirt back up, so she retaliated and pulled up the other girls shirt, and I guess they got into a scuffle and Bubbles spit on her and bit her.

We had a talk about what she should have done versus what she actually did, which I guess they had already done at school. Then I talked to her about how she might lose her friend if she treats her that way, and that if she continues that kind of behavior into adulthood, she might end up in jail. It's not ever okay to put your hands on someone else in a harmful manner.

I told her that I love her and that I have to discipline her in order to make her change, and she needed to understand how bad it is to harm another person. So she got four nights of going to bed early. I wasn't entirely satisfied with the punishment, but I couldn't think of what was a logical consequence for fighting. I guess going to bed early for four nights is a bit like jail (okay, maybe not) but maybe it will give her some time to really think about what she did.

2 comments:

FosterAbba said...

It's hard to come up with logical consequences for stuff, especially when the school won't back you up. Our kid wouldn't bring her homework home, and the school wouldn't back us.

We wanted them to give her a detention, or do something to her, but they refused. Finally we started homeschooling her via the public charter school.

(And yes, you can homeschool foster kids -- they just have to be enrolled in any accredited public school.)

Vanessa said...

I recently read a post on a message board from a mom who had created a "jail" experience for her son (a couple years older than Bubbles) after he'd been caught stealing. Basically, she took everything out of his room except his bed, and he had to stay in there for an entire weekend, only coming out to have meals and go to the bathroom. She told him that if he thought that was bad, real jail would be a lot worse, and that was where he would go if he kept stealing as an adult. I don't know how it worked out, but I thought it was an interesting, if tough, approach.