Tattle Tale

School is always interesting with four children and to be quite honest, although I pray for our teachers every year and practically beg God to give us good ones, things don't always work out as I'd hoped.

I can pretty much count on the behaviour of all my children, both good and bad, so most things do not surprise me. Still nonetheless, I want people to see the good in my children even if on some days they have to look a little harder.

In Mark Thomas' class they come home with conduct folders each week and there are comments for each day along with a final grade for that week. Well, after the first week, I could tell this would not be a folder I looked forward to seeing each week. His teacher had written talking, talking, talking, talking for each day and yelling at recess on one specific day and given him a conduct grade of 70% for that week. Great, we're off to a good start! I signed the folder and then wrote my own comment that I would speak to him and it would be clear that there would be consequences if it didn't improve.

Now, I am not a mother that is above bribery and when I think it will work, I go full steam ahead. MT loves to go to the dollar store and knows the true value of a dollar even if he doesn't always save them up. So, my proposition, should he choose to accept it would be that temporarily until we got on track, if he were to come home with a conduct grade of 90% he'd get to buy something for $5 or less, and if he came home with a grade of 100% then we'd celebrate with something $10 or less. He very quickly jumped aboard!

So last week since we took what Max is now calling a "hurrication" we only had two days of school. Really, how much damage can be done in two days to not earn a good score. So on Friday, I was actually anxious to see what he was given for conduct. 90%was his score, but still we got "talking" on one day and then just to cap it off "sticking pretzels in his ears at lunch" was on Fridays box. I mean honestly, boys will be boys and both Mark and I had to chuckle while at the same time saying, "MT, it's not a good idea to stick pretzels in your ears" and at that very moment I thought to myself, no more buying pretzel sticks, I must buy the regular twist ones.