7 Year Old Boy & Lack of Self-control @ School. Reward System? Ideas Please....

Smart and the ablity to supress an impulse are completely different and mutually exclusive skills. If you put the great athlete Tiger Woods on the Football field, and then take away his TV time because he did not win, it will not help him to be a better football player. Your son needs instruction and opportunity to practice being in control of impulsive behaviors in combintatin with an anyalsis of what is really going on. If this is nothing more than the garden variety of a boy in class being on the late side of this kind of control, then just reinforce the structure of school at home, and instead of punishing the bad days, reward the good days and ask him what he did to avoid the impuslive behavoirs that day. If he really is just learning this skill, then you will still se results as he gains control without making a major deal of it at home with a drastic punishment.

If this is not a garden variety impulse control issue, and you are really seeing your teacher documenting a nuerological issue for you, then if you punnish his behavior that he cannot control because of a nuerological issue with out dealing with it appropriately, then he is not going to learn anything other than he is being punnished for something he cannot seem to control on any relaiable time table. Additionally, kids with this kind of impairment need concequnces applied imeadiately, or they are ineffective, so your punishment later will not apply to the behavior you desire to reduce anyway.

I did not get the impression from your post that your son has a major issue, but I would be at school finding out if the teacher is over or under documenting. The Humming is a flag for me, and I would not be thinking ADHD, I would be leaving that to a professional based on what you see, if indeed you needed any kind of assessment. That is the first condition that parents and teachers think about with impulsive behaviors, but humming is just not a typical thing you hear about, and I certainly hope that humming is a one time thing.

If he is bored because he is very smart, that is not a neurological issue. Some children who have very good skills have behavior issues because they have relative weaknesses between thier intelectual function and thier soical function, or, may have a relative weakness between thier verbal ablitlies and thier motor ablities, so every time they do something in class where they have more average skills, they feel less acomplished, loose track of thier focus, and missbehave. That is not a nuerlogical problem, but may look the same. If you really think that your son has a problem with this kind of behavior, you need to know if he has a nuerological disfuction, or a relative weakness in relationship to very, very advanced skills. Both issues are only able to be delt with if you get a good educational or nueropsychological evaluation.

I am not getting that you are at the point where you need to do that yet. I would rule out that he just needs a few weeks of direct feedback from the teacher about the new second grade behavioral expectations before I jumped that conclusion. The only way you can know that for sure is to observe the class, talk to the teacher, and not over react to his color and face card while he is learning, so he feels safe enough to make progress.

M.

http://www.boysandschools.com/factsheets/02-devdiff.php

I could get on my soap box about how schools are not made for the "average" boy (especially the younger ones), but the above article says it all.
Just my two cents (and the reason we homeschool),
R.

I'm a fourth grade teacher, so I'm going to try to answer this from both a teacher perspective and a mother's perspective.

I think the punishment you're giving him for reaching yellow is way too drastic. If he gets a yellow in school for humming, he then loses TV time. If you think about it that way, he loses TV for humming. The punishment really doesn't fit the crime. Instead, talk with him about his day, and discuss what he can do to improve the next day. I would reserve punishment for red days, and try to come up with consequences that fit (maybe some quiet, reflective time, or reduced TV/game/outside time).

Now, looking at this as a teacher, and ONLY based on the little information you've given...does your son have difficulty with impulse control issues?
Again, only looking at this based on what you wrote, I noticed he hums, blurts out, asks to get up a lot, and runs in the lunch room. At first glance I would think ADHD or something along those lines. Now, obviously you know him way better, and I might be completely off base here, but if you notice any extreme behaviors, you might want to consult your pediatrician. It may be boredom, like you said, or it could just be that he's an active boy.

Regardless of why he does what he does, you and your son's teacher should discuss ways to help him learn improve his behavior. She may need to lessen up a bit on some things (like moving his card for humming...in my book that's not that big of a deal!). He could also be taught some strategies to use in school to control himself.

I'm only offering this because I haven't seen it yet in your responses... please remember that just as you and your son are human and make mistakes, so is the teacher. If you are noticing this a lot, you might take some time out of your day and attempt to go and observe for a while. You might be surprised at what you see. So far these seem to be rather minor infractions and it may be that the teacher is so overworked (too many students) that she can't handle ANY deviation in behavior - which may not be an appropriate approach for a 7 year old.

I also like what another poster said about instead of punishing for yellow or red trying to reward green... then he is getting attention (which every kid wants) for the good stuff, and not the bad. Good luck!
-H

It sounds like his teacher is working really hard to help him learn self control (some teachers will complain but not spend the time to make the charts and follow through all day long with the colored faces-I mean they have a lot of students and a lot of curriculum to teach they are very busy!) So be happy that she is doing this -it sounds very appropriate and it sounds like he is improving. Remember that yellow means "pay attention to your behavior or your noises" it means "you need to self regulate" it doesn't really mean he deserves punishment. Red means the yellow didn't slow him down. If he was on a 1.2.3 warning system you would not punish for one or two warnings only for 3rd offense. So rejoice for green and praise for yellow "you were warned and then you listened and got better!" Only red deserves punishment.

WOW!! I can honestly say that I know exactly what you are going thru. My son, same age and grade, is having the same trouble at school. He can't stop talking, can't sit still or stay in his seat, he ends up distracting the kids and teacher. We still haven't figured out how to get him to do better. We think that some of it is because he's bored and ready to move on to the next bit of what they're learning, but some of it is that he just can NOT control his body. My son was diagnosed with adhd and even the meds for that aren't really helping much. I've been trying with the reward system as well as the "if you can't behave you get something taken away". I'll let you know if we find something that works, as well as keep an eye on here to see what other ideas are out there.

My child would resort occasionally to such activities (at that age) but the teacher labelled it as getting bored because the curriculum was not challenging or stimulating enough for him. She would take extra effort at keeping him stimulated by having him do extra activities like being class liason to school office or answering the class telephone, interacting with other classrooms on activities. Over the years as the curriculum grew his focus improved. Hope that helps. (We are thankful to that teacher - his next class teacher was not as forgiving - but we knew what needed to be done).