Keep Your Hands to Yourself!

This was the big lesson for Timmy this week. If you remember from an earlier post, Timmy's teacher had told us at Back to School Night that she was working with Timmy on keeping his hands to himself. Well this week we got a note home from her. Timmy didn't earn his smiley face that day and the note said, "Timmy had a hard time keeping his hands to himself." She went on to describe how he hit someone in the lunch room after he and others laughed at him for dropping his sandwich. She also told me how she handled the situation though my first reaction was to offer a consequence at home for Timmy's behavior. I had a long talk with Timmy about not hitting others and I tried teaching him some things to say to others instead of hitting. I told Ken about the incident, he read the note, and he talked to Timmy, too. I asked for some advice from my FRUA support network and they all agreed to let the consequences take place in school. Talking to him and teaching him strategies is one thing, but there's no need for any other real consequences from us; we need to be a safe place for him. The more I thought about the situation, I wondered if the kid actually deserved a reaction other a simple, "don't laugh at me"?!? (No, I'm not condoning violence, so don't read too much into that one!) And I wouldn't tell Timmy that a small part of me agreed with him because he is too young and immature to hear that understand my reasoning behind it. So, the "no hitting" rule and the "keep your hands to yourself rule" still apply.

Lira didn't have a very eventful week (that I'm aware of!) We did get a progress report sent home and she is doing well in more areas than I expected given her language situation! It does say that she needs improvement in reading and writing- no surprise there. I've learned that the ESOL teacher has yet to work with Lira since the first visit. Needless to say, I'm not very happy about that, so I've emailed the ESOL teacher about this three times as of yesterday. No response from him- STILL. Now it's time for me to take the next step. (I just have to figure out what the next step is!!) I continue to work with Lira almost each night on spelling, sounds, and reading. She's quite a trooper!