He and two other boys were writing bad words -- and when I say bad I mean like real bad -- on a notebook that Spirit had brought outside with him. A teacher caught them and they got sent to the Principal's office. She made him write a letter to us telling us what he did and she photocopied the page of bad words for us to see.
When I got home from work I noticed Spirit being extra helpful and sweet. At first I thought nothing bad of it and just thought he was being sweet. Pretty soon his sweetness was overflowing so much it was starting to get real obvious something else was going on. Mr. Man and I kept looking at each other and finally at 8:00 Spirit said he needed to talk to his dad. They went in Spirit's room and closed the door. They were in there a long time. While they were in there I got Lefty and Lady Bug ready for bed and all tucked in to bed. About 40 minutes later, Spirit came out and got ready for bed, told me good night as if this were a regular night.
Mr. Man came to where I was reading and showed me the letter and the photocopy of my son's notebook. He told me Spirit was not allowed at school today unless we signed the letter. He explained to me what Spirit had told him of the events leading up to the letter. We have been having lots of talks lately that we all make choices, choices have consequences -- good choices have good consequences and bad choices have bad consequences. But we were not real sure what the consequences should be to this one. We wanted it severe enough to make the impression it needed to.
After lots of discussion we decided that he needed to write the principal and the teacher a letter of apology. He is also grounded and will not be allowed to go to a birthday party he was invited to on Saturday.
I wanted to impress upon him that maybe you should think about what the consequence might be before you do something. I explained to him this morning the consequences of his actions yesterday. He got teary-eyed, but never cried..... the tears just poured down his face. After breakfast he went to his room to get dressed.... he came out all dressed (even his shoes on, which is rare) and he also had a note he wrote to the principal and teacher. He asked me if it was ok to just write one letter and then asked me to read what he wrote:
Dr. Ms. H and Ms. E
I am sorry I wrote those bad words and made bad choices.
From now on I will think before I do things.
I thought that was very good since I didn't tell him what he should write. I went to the school this morning and talked with the teacher and the principal. I sort of wished they had called me yesterday to tell me, but she said she wanted the kids to tell their parents so it would have a bigger impact.
2 comments:
Those are some tough lessons to learn, and I am sure the letter writing made an impact on him. The letter he wrote is a typical little man, direct and straight to the point, no fluff. Well written.
It's so tough to watch our kids learn, isn't it?
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