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Teenager is late for school and misses first hour
We have a senior boy and freshman girl. Our girl must get to school
early (a whole 20 min) to drop off her instrument before her first class. School starts at 7:40 am and we like to leave at 7:15 - 7:20 am. We have had to leave without him four times to get our daughter to school on time. He refuses to go into his first hour class late and misses first hour. Very frustrating that he cannot get up to leave on time - he gets up at 7:45 and takes long shower. We excused a few of these absences. The school does nothing accept lower his grade. He has lost what few privileges he has at home. His response is that we should buy him a car so that he can drive separately. We live in an affluent are where most kids have cars. Should we pick our battles and excuse these and drive him separately? We are worried that he will never succeed of anything. |
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Teenager is late for school and misses first hour
Doesn't help you, but I sure wish that high schools started later in the
day. It's almost a reason to go to a private school, where they begin at a more reasonable 9:00. Why is it that the elementary schools begin the latest? The younger kids wake up the earliest. And they are the ones who need supervision no matter what, so parents employed out of the home have to get before-school care. Meanwhile, the kids who want to sleep in, where there's studies that prove that they biologically are inclined to sleep later, have to get to school the earliest. It doesn't make sense! I read somewhere that you can raise test scores by some significant amount (I don't have the citation), if you let high schoolers start school two hours later. Some people will say it's athletics. OK, so if you want to do something that requires you to be at school longer, have those few people do their atheletic thing at 7:00. Then it's their choice, rather than penalizing everyone else. -- Warm Regards, Claire Petersky http://www.bicyclemeditations.org/ See the books I've set free at: http://bookcrossing.com/referral/Cpetersky |
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Teenager is late for school and misses first hour
wrote in message oups.com... We have a senior boy and freshman girl. Our girl must get to school early (a whole 20 min) to drop off her instrument before her first class. School starts at 7:40 am and we like to leave at 7:15 - 7:20 am. We have had to leave without him four times to get our daughter to school on time. He refuses to go into his first hour class late and misses first hour. Very frustrating that he cannot get up to leave on time - he gets up at 7:45 and takes long shower. We excused a few of these absences. The school does nothing accept lower his grade. He has lost what few privileges he has at home. His response is that we should buy him a car so that he can drive separately. We live in an affluent are where most kids have cars. Should we pick our battles and excuse these and drive him separately? We are worried that he will never succeed of anything. Are you in the college hunt stage? Will a bad grade in this one class make a difference in whether he's home with you next year or off on his own? I've had relatives and friends that were accepted to a college, in the spring, and then rejected in July when the schools got the final transcripts and found they didn't finish their classes in the manor their applications implied they would. In general, it you are going for life lessons, I'd say quit taking him to school late and excusing him from the class and let him fail. But as senior, that lesson could make a difference in whether he goes away to college, where he will learn to be responsible for himself; or whether he'll be stuck at home while friends go off to school, all the while blaming his lack of success on you. You can try getting his counselor to tranfer him out of first period for next semester and maybe pick this class up later in the day.(Classes before 8am for high school students isn't the brightest idea the educational community has come up with...) You could offer to get him a car IF he takes his sister to school everyday. He wins a car to drive, you get both of them to school early. He loses car privileges if she doesn't make it to school by 7:25. Or you can just go with what you are doing now. But this is a cautionary tale, that teaching consequences should start younger, when the consequences aren't as dire. If kids would just chose to rebel younger.... |
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Teenager is late for school and misses first hour
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Teenager is late for school and misses first hour
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Teenager is late for school and misses first hour
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Teenager is late for school and misses first hour
On Nov 21, 6:59*am, Paula wrote: Do not excuse his absences or tardies. * Careful -- in Texas (or at least in our part of Texas) the parents can be held legally responsible for a child not getting to school... that's a younger child, though -- so maybe in High School this is a viable alternative. In Middle School (where we struggle with this issue) we could be fined or jailed for unexcuses absences. Tell him that if he is too tired to get up on time, he must need to go to bed earlier and make sure he is in his room with lights out even if you have to take the light bulb to bed with you so he either sleeps or lies there bored. * This seems to make so much sense, but in reality it probably won't work unless the parents are willing to stay up all night long or take every lightbulb in the house to bed with them. How do you keep a nearly grown young man in his bed or even require that he be there at a given time? I haven't found a way -- I've certainly found ways to strongly encourage it by taking away privileges, but tricks like this just start a cat and mouse game that is both tiring and counterproductive -- and worse, take the focus away from the main issue at hand. You say you have already taken all his privileges, but what are you defining as privileges? *As a counselor, I hear that all the time. *I can't make him do his homework is even more common. *I ask what the child is doing instead of homework and parents look at me like I have lost my mind. *But it turns out that the kid is riding his bike, talking to friends on the phone, hanging out at the mall, whatever. So you can't physically make a child do homework, but you can make sure he doesn't do anything else until he has done it and suddenly he is motivated to do it. * *some kids* Others will just sit around or find ways to amuse themselves without all the stuff. First you need to understand why the kid doesn't want to do the homework. As the parent, you control everything that matters to your son. *It's actually rare that the school has the power to make a teenager do what they want. * And also rare that the parent actually does. And most importantly, the parent must think about more than the academic success of their child. Sometimes success in school is not the top priority with some kids. This is off the OP's original question, but I think some of the "my way or the highway" advice here works only with a kid who is just refusing. That's not the case for all kids who are having trouble in school. -Dawn |
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Teenager is late for school and misses first hour
On Sun, 10 Dec 2006 14:50:05 EST, "Dawn"
wrote: On Nov 21, 6:59*am, Paula wrote: Do not excuse his absences or tardies. * Careful -- in Texas (or at least in our part of Texas) the parents can be held legally responsible for a child not getting to school... that's a younger child, though -- so maybe in High School this is a viable alternative. In Middle School (where we struggle with this issue) we could be fined or jailed for unexcuses absences. In my part of California, the parents can also be fined for unexcused absences. If worse comes to worse, however, and you can't get your child to school without physical force beyond what is allowed parents, you can call the sheriff or police. It sounds weird, but we used to do it when I was a counselor at a middle school and school staff couldn't go out on a home visit. In the cases I knew of, the kid always went to school with the police, but if he didn't, the fact that the police had been called and couldn't get the kid to school established that the parents had done what they could to get the kid to school and they would not be fined. Furthermore, it would not help in cases where attendance is bad enough for the authorities to get involved with an eye to fines if the kid's absences are excused. They know parents write notes to excuse unexcusable absences and it would be stupid to let them off the hook for school attendance just by writing notes. If there are a certain number of absences, the parents come up for review, even if the absences are excused. The parents had better be able to prove that the child was sick enough to be gone that often or they will be fined no matter how many notes they wrote. In fact, they are more likely to be fined by those who run our local attendance review board if they did write excuses because they are seen as being a big part of the problem by letting the kids think that it is okay to skip school because their parents will excuse it. If the parents have refused to write excuses and have backed up school discipline for absences, they at least look like they have been trying instead of being in league with the kid who doesn't want to attend. -- Paula "Anyway, other people are weird, but sometimes they have candy, so it's best to try to get along with them." Joe Bay |
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