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While
reading this report, you will probably notice that I don’t really know who to
direct this information to! I start out
instructing teachers what to tell parents who are being driven crazy by their
child…then shift into a mode where I am giving the parents direct instructions
about what to do with their disrespectful student. I am trying to direct this message to
everyone, because I don’t want anyone to be left out…searching for
answers. I think any adult can benefit
from this information – it’s that powerful!
With that said, it’s time to start helping you find effective techniques
to deal with your challenging child:
You will
encounter a parent (probably several parents) during your first year of
teaching that has no control over their child.
You will tell the parent that their child doesn’t do her homework, is
disrespectful/disruptive in class, and may not pass unless she straightens
herself out. The parent will look you
straight in the eye and say, “I know, she is the same way at home. I have no clue what to do with her. She doesn’t do anything we ask her to do, she
stays out late without telling us where she is going, she calls me names and
uses profanity towards me…is there anything you can do to help?” Most of the time, the parent will cry during
her story. I have heard the story
hundreds of times in my career, and it upsets me every time. The conduct of your student is not only
making the student’s life miserable, it is having a negative effect on every
member of the student’s family. You only
have to put up with her behavior for an hour a day, five times a week. Imagine dealing with her 24/7!
For the
first few years of my career, I had no answers.
I would say things like, “Just continue to love her, maybe she’ll grow
out of it” or “I was pretty rambunctious when I was her age, and I turned out
O.K.”…knowing in my heart that the damage had already been done to this
child. During my sixth year of teaching,
I met and befriended a man who ran a juvenile detention facility. I told him about my helplessness when
confronted by parents at the end of their rope.
He laughed and said that he knew of only one way to turn around a young
person’s life and regain parental authority.
He called it the “Level System”.
Unruly
children begin at “Level Zero”, which means that they have zero privileges. The student’s room is stripped of everything
except a bed. What about their
dresser? Gone. Phone?
Gone. The same goes for the
computer, video games, T.V., cell phone, radio, iPod, MP3 player, food, and
drink. Male students will receive a
haircut…female students will have their hair styled the way the parent deems
appropriate. Piercings are taken out at
the parent’s discretion. The parent is
to say this to the child: “You have
demonstrated through your actions that you cannot handle the level of freedom
that I have bestowed upon you. From now
on, you are going to have to earn your freedoms and privileges one by one.”
The student
is placed on a strict schedule, which may look something like this:
School Day
7:00 a.m. –
Wake up
7:15 –
Shower/breakfast
8:00 – Go
to school
3:00 – Come
home from school
3:00-5:30 –
Homework/reading
5:30-6:00 –
Supper
6:00-6:30 –
Clean up kitchen
6:30-8:30 –
Homework/reading
8:30-9:00 –
Get ready for bed
9:00 p.m. –
Lights Out
Holiday/Weekend
Schedule
9:00 a.m. –
Wake up
9:15-10:00
– Breakfast/shower
10:00-12:00
– Chores
12:00-1:00
– Lunch
1:00-3:00 –
Chores
3:00-5:00 –
Homework/reading
5:30-6:30 –
Supper
6:30-7:00 –
Clean up kitchen
7:00-9:00 –
“Free Time” (if the student has earned it)
9:00 p.m. –
Lights Out
The student
wakes up in the morning, and finds his/her outfit laid out on the floor, chosen
by the parent. But what about my “Insane
Clown Posse” shirt, sagging pants, and boxer shorts? Gone…the parent is in control now.
At this
point, the parent is thinking “Isn’t this going to be inconvenient? I am keeping all of my child’s belongings in
my room (or the garage) and I am monitoring my child’s every move!” At this point, I would say “Is it inconvenient
to have to drive to your child’s school to have parent conferences with your
child’s teachers or principal? Is it
inconvenient to go to the police station to pick your child up after they have
been picked up for committing a crime?
Is it inconvenient to drive around town looking for your child when you
don’t know where she is? Is it
inconvenient for your child to repeat a grade?
What about raising a child that has to live at home into adulthood
because she doesn’t have the education or job skills to be employed? Is it inconvenient to raise a child conceived
by your child because your child cannot take care of a child by herself?” In comparison to these inconveniences, using
the Level System to correct your child’s behavior is not inconvenient at all!
Once the
child’s room has been stripped, the child can make out several 3x5 cards with
privileges she would like to earn back.
Some examples would be: one hour
of “free time” each day, one hour of “T.V. Time” each day, get phone back, get
iPod back, privilege of choosing outfit to wear to school, ability to choose
hairstyle, ability to visit a friend’s house for one hour, privilege of going
on a walk for one hour.
The child
can earn a privilege back if she meets your requirements for good behavior for
a certain period of time. I usually use
a week as a good measuring stick. If the
student doesn’t get in trouble at school for a week, she can ask for one of her
privileges back. If she earns one back,
she then is considered at “Level One” status.
She may bring home a report card with no “F’s” on it. That would be cause for celebration and a
bump up to Level Two. Another week goes
by, and you notice that she has not called you a vulgar name…Level Three! Now she has earned three privileges
back! Your child is gaining confidence
in herself, and is setting a goal to move up the ladder of levels until she
earns all of her previous status back.
On the flip
side, you are in control of what happens when the child slips back into her old
ways. If the infraction is considered
minor, you might choose to remove only one privilege. If the transgression is serious, you may move
the child back to Level Zero again and repeat the process. The important thing to remember is that the
parent is in control, not the student!
Oh, but the
student will try to regain control! The
student is the king/queen of manipulation…and will try some of these tactics to
regain the upper hand:
“If you try
to enforce this stupid plan on me, I will report you for abuse.” – Millions of
kids nationwide use this on their parents, and many of them are
successful. Parents cannot live their
lives in fear of having their kids taken away.
The parent should reply to this threat by saying “I would rather have
the state raise you right, because I’m doing it all wrong. If you won’t let me do what I need to do to
bring you up properly, it would be better for all of us in the long run if you
were raised by someone else.” Yes…I know
that it sounds harsh, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Parents cannot continue to let their kids
call the shots by using this trick!
“If you try
to enforce this stupid plan on me, I will go live with Dad.” – Many divorced
parents are threatened by their children with this ultimatum on a daily basis. Parents should call their child’s bluff with
either of these two replies: “You can go
live with Dad, but you will not be welcome back here when things go wrong
there.” Or, “You can go live with Dad,
but when you request to come back here after things go wrong, you will be on
‘Level Zero’ with me. You will have to
earn your privileges back if you are going to live in this house.”
“If you try
to enforce this stupid plan on me, I will just refuse to go to school.” – This
is actually an easy problem to solve.
The parent needs to call the juvenile justice authorities. “But I don’t want my child to have a criminal
record!”, the parent will cry. The
problem is that the student is SURE to have a criminal record if the parent
continues to let the student manipulate the parents...and the criminal record
will be for something way more substantial than truancy. Quit living in denial and face the facts…the
sooner that the child discovers that you are serious, the better.
“If you try
to enforce this stupid plan on me…I am going to kill myself!” – Thousands of
kids use this type of emotional blackmail on their parents on any given day,
and experience a lot of success doing it.
Most parents don’t really think that their child will kill
themselves…but they don’t want to take the chance. What would everyone think of me if my child
ACTUALLY killed herself! It is a
scenario that no one wants to think about.
So, parents take the easy way out, and let their child get away with
murder instead. What the parent fails to
realize is that the child IS killing herself…just in a different way – through
drug and alcohol abuse, smoking, unprotected sex, and other reckless behaviors. The parent needs to realize that the child’s
best chance to actually LIVE her life is to submit to parental authority.
“If you try
to enforce this stupid plan on me…it must mean that you hate me!” – Kids just
don’t get it sometimes! Luckily, you are
the adult, and realize that the best way to show your love to your child is to
raise them right. The hard part is
convincing the child that letting kids do whatever they want is the worst way
to raise a child, and the way to set a person up for a life of sadness and
heartache. Kids who are raised with no
boundaries grow up to be adults who are never satisfied with what they have or
where they are. They usually do not
grasp the importance of getting a good education, and are more interested in
instant gratification rather than setting goals and working to achieve them. The parent should ask the child to trust
them, and be confident that their parent is acting in their best interest.
What many
people find hard to believe (but research proves it to be true) is that
students crave structure in their lives.
They may SAY they don’t want structure, but they secretly do. Structure helps young people make sense of
what is going on in their world.
Students who are not provided with structure engage in unproductive
behaviors (at best) and self-destructive behaviors (at worst). How many young people have been saved from an
unproductive life by our nation’s military?
Thousands of directionless youngsters join our service academies every
year, and blossom into successful, productive members of society because they
find the structure that was missing in their lives.
Why does
structure provide such a turnaround for kids?
It works because it is provided by someone who cares about them. I tell my students all the time that it is
easy for parents to let their kids run the streets doing anything they want,
not caring enough to confront them and show them the right path. The REAL way that parents show their children
that they care is to furnish structure, guidelines, expectations, and
consequences for them. The ironic part
is that kids know that to be true as well, even though they will never say it.
The reason
why I know that they know it is true is because of gangs. Gangs are spreading across the
You would
not believe the number of parents who think that moving to another town will
solve the problem of an unruly child.
“When we move…Nikki will not be able to hang out with the wrong
crowd…she can start over.” Here’s the
problem…Nikki will hang out with the same “wrong crowd” in your new town unless
you address the real problem, which is Nikki herself. Schools are made up of cliques…the
cheerleaders, the jocks, the stoners, the gangsters, the band members, the
choir kids, the drama club, the skaters, and the honor students. New kids are steered into the proper clique
based on their behavior and appearance.
You have to CHANGE Nikki, not just move the same Nikki to a new
location.
So how do
you go about changing your child? Good
question! The younger the child is, the
better the chance that you will change her.
Your chances of changing a 17 year-old are not as good as changing a 10
year-old. Here are some ways to change
your child from the inside out:
*Limit the lines of communication your
child has with the outside world – You think that you are keeping your son Jeff
from communicating with his friends, but he texts them all night via his cell
phone, and he has a computer in his room for “homework” purposes (although he
tells you that he never has homework).
Get the computer and T.V. out of his room, and confiscate the cell phone
at 9 p.m. When the lines of
communication are removed, the strong bonds your child has with his friends
will weaken.
*Monitor your child’s activities –
Many parents say that they are at work, and therefore unable to keep track of
what their child is doing when they are away.
They should invest in a web cam to keep an eye on their child. Some cameras are as little as $30. A student on Level Zero should be required to
sit at the kitchen table, under the camera, doing homework or reading until the
parent comes home. You can see what your
student is doing by way of your work computer, or even your cell phone if it
has internet capabilities.
*Incentives – Most teens have one
thing on their minds at all times…”What’s in it for me?” If your student sees his situation as
hopeless, then he will shut down. Try to
find something that the child has done right, and reward him for it. Don’t go overboard and let him have all his
privileges back because of one good deed, but let him have something he wants
as a boost to his spirits.
*Consistency – Let’s face it…a lack of
consistency has put us in this bad situation, right? The parent has to stick to the plan, and not
let the relationship revert back to “normal” after a short period of time. The student may even cry, admit guilt, and
apologize for his actions in order to mend fences with the parent. DO NOT FALL FOR IT! This is manipulation! The parent should tell the student that this
discipline plan is for the good of everyone in the family, and that it will
help the family become stronger in the long run.
*Family Dinner – This is difficult,
considering there are so many parents working in the 21st
Century. I have been there, believe
me! You come home from work,
exhausted…so the easy way out is to bring home a pizza, order food to be
delivered, or let everyone microwave their own meal to eat in their room or on
the couch. To change this, you will have
to set a specific family dinner time, and require all family members to be
present at that time. Serve the meal,
and engage in conversation with the kids about what their day was like. It is amazing what can happen to a family
when they eat just one meal a day together!
*Get the Child Involved in Something!
– The parent must find something that the student is interested in, and help
the student pursue that interest. The
theory is that a busy child doesn’t have time to get into trouble. I have read several articles recently warning
against “overscheduling” children into too many outside activities. I say overscheduling is way better than
having a student with too much time on his/her hands!
How can
this plan fail? There are many ways that
your plan to get your child under control can fail…here are a few mindsets that
lead to disaster:
*Implementing this plan without
investing time into your relationship with the child – Remember, this plan only
works because the child sees the structure implemented by someone who CARES
about them as a person. Spend time interacting
with your child – do homework together (look up answers on the computer if you
are unsure or uncomfortable about doing the work yourself), look through old
photo albums together, play video games, wash the car, cut the grass, clean the
house…do something as a team. You can’t
punish your child, then refuse to acknowledge that they are alive. Your efforts to discipline the child will
backfire.
*Have the attitude “I can’t search
Jimmy’s room…it would violate his privacy.” – You can’t give Jimmy rights that
he hasn’t earned, because it will just encourage Jimmy to demand more
rights. You own the house, YOU make the
rules. I am an assistant principal at a
middle school, and I require students to sit in assigned seats at lunch from
Day One at school. Why? Because they haven’t earned the right to sit
where they want (and there is no law or policy stating that students have the
right to sit where they choose.) After a
couple of weeks of good behavior, I then give students the freedom to sit at
any table. Their behavior is great
because they police their own behavior!
If anyone acts up, the other students say, “Cool it! Do you really want to go back to sitting in
assigned seats?” Controlling a cafeteria
full of 300 teenagers becomes easy at that point. YOU can have the same success!
* “I am afraid of my child” – If you
feel this way, I am afraid that I cannot help you.
*Telling your child “I hate you” or
other hurtful statements during a fight – Even if you apologize later, and
explain why you said such hurtful and damaging things during arguments/power
struggles with your child…the damage has been done.
There are so many ways to get your child under control again, I don’t have enough room in this report to list them all. Luckily, you are now signed up to receive my newsletter, and I will send you additional strategies periodically that will help you gain control of your house again, build a strong relationship with your children, and raise happy, well-adjusted, responsible kids! If you are having trouble downloading this report, simply email me at newteacherhelp@yahoo.com and I will send the report as a PDF or Microsoft Word attachment. Talk to you later!