Argh

I called King J when I got out of class tonight, and got less than thrilling news..

When King J went to pick D up from school, D's teacher decided she needed to talk to King J.

Never a good sign.

It turns out that D has been:

* Throwing things at his classmates
* Not paying attention to the teacher
* Hiding schoolwork
* Not bringing schoolwork home


I have theories. Theory 1 is that he was hiding his schoolwork and not bringing it home because he has been told numerous times that if he is not doing good with his schoolwork, he does not get to play videogames. 6 year old's solution? 'Don't let them know I'm not doing good.' Makes sense, but not a smart move. No idea what he was throwing. But, it's Tuesday, and I doubt D's teacher is going to wait partway into the next week to discuss something from the previous week, so I'm thinking he started throwing things today or yesterday. King J asked him why he was throwing things at the other kids, and D told him they made him mad, but when King J asked him how they made him mad, he just said "I don't know."

Thursday night he peed his bed. Monday afternoon he peed his pants while playing with the girls from up the street. Last night he peed the bed. I think those are also probably connected to his visitation.

Yesterday he brought home schoolwork that he obviously put zero effort into. Missing spelling words on a practice test, not a big deal, just need to work on those words at home some more. But the worksheet where he's supposed to fill in the boxes with the missing numbers - no real thinking, you just put the numbers in their natural order - being filled in with backwards numbers and numbers in random places that don't even make sense.. Yeah, that's an issue. Namely for the fact that if we tell him to go sit down and write his numbers 1-20, he writes them in perfect order facing the right direction.

He does great work at home, but he doesn't even try at school, because he doesn't pay attention. He tries to say that his teacher doesn't tell them what they are supposed to do, but yeah right. We know better than that. What 1st grade teacher is going to hand out worksheets to the kids and say, do this on your own? None that I can think of. He just doesn't feel like paying attention.

He hasn't been trying at all in school this year. Last year he was trying really hard, most of the time. Not this year. And it's really frustrating because he does crap on his work at school, but he comes home and we tell him to do the same thing and he has no problem with it. He does great work at home, and I think it's mainly because King J stays on his back about it. He doesn't get away with just sitting there, pretending to do the work. It's not a once-in-a-while thing, either. Daily. Every day he ends up having to practice writing his letters and numbers because he didn't even try at school. When he brought home his papers yesterday, he got 2 days of being grounded from video games and a warning that the next time Jason heard or found out that he wasn't doing good in school he would lose 2 days of video games every time, and for those two days he would have a 7:30 bedtime.

King J was planning to take D to Pine Island this weekend. I think Dakota needs to be put on a probation and told that if he doesn't behave the rest of this week, he won't get to go. I don't think it's right to reward him with going camping if he won't act right at school. King J doesn't seem to completely agree. Fortunately, I finally got a hold of D's counselor (been trying to for several weeks, now) and made arrangements for him to call King J tomorrow to set up a time to meet with D tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully that will help things.

D just came in here a while ago asking for a drink.. I thought about it but decided no because I just told him this morning that he won't be getting drinks at night, to try to keep him from peeing the bed. Of course, he whined and threw a mini fit while stomping back to bed, and then immediately fell back asleep.