Dear {Bear's High School} team,
Trying one last time.
Why do there continue to be no consequences for Bear’s
excessive absences (20) and tardies (12) this semester? My understanding is that according to his BIP {Behavior Intervention Plan} there should have been consequences long ago.
Also, he’s failing Philosophy (30 the 1st 6 weeks and 22 the
next). I realize he doesn’t need
Philosophy to graduate, but now he claims he’s been allowed to join the
wrestling team. Even if this is a club, and
therefore doesn’t fall under the UIL “No pass. No play,” rules, it still doesn’t
make sense that he should be allowed to participate in a school sponsored program
while having these issues.
I realize Bear is legally an adult, but we do have a
Power of Attorney, and it is well documented that he’s not emotionally an adult. He’s learned a lot in his years at
{Bear's High School}. I’d like to quit reinforcing some of the more
negative things that will have an adverse effect on any future jobs he might
manage to get.
Were Bear’s teachers even notified that we need to be
kept aware of any issues he may be developing as a result of his stopping his
medications cold turkey over Spring Break?
This is vital to his well-being, especially as his impulsiveness and
mood instability increase. I’d like to
try to keep him out of jail and prevent him from seriously injuring
anyone. FYI, I am fairly certain he
still has no learner’s permit or driver’s license, so if he’s seen driving, I’d
like to be notified (and if he can’t produce a license then the police should
be notified as well).
I expect to hear soon how this issue is being resolved.
Thank you,
3 comments:
Consequences at school? Unheard of! I'm being sarcastic. I feel your pain. I just left a 2 hour meeting with Penelope's intervention specialist about consequences and why is it so hard. But all we can do as parent advocates is be the squeaky wheel. Unfortunately.
Even if the school did what you want and barred your son from joining the wrestling team (I'm not sure what grounds they'd have to do this, but just suppose) and if he were given some kind of consequences for his tardiness and absenteeism, what would it achieve?
Sadly, he's 18 and no longer living under your roof. Like it or not, you don't have any control over him, as far as I can tell. Expecting the school to notify the police if he's seen driving a car is highly unlikely, and if he did get a ticket for driving without a license, do you think that would be somehow be a wakeup call to make him a responsible adult?
I understand your frustration over your son's situation. It's shared by many families who adopt older children and even some who adopted their kids as infants. It makes me wonder if nature has the upper hand over nuture in the old debate.
Miz K - the only reason I want the school to follow through on consequences is to reinforce the lesson that real life is going to pound into his head a billion times over - if you skip work and appointments, you will be fired and lose services. Granted he'll get this lesson many times in the future, but I was hoping that he would learn it was a universal truth, instead of "mean people picking on him" and that he "can and should manipulate the system." It was why I was so disappointed when he got off with no consequences from the first ticket.
I know in his case nature dealt him just as nasty a blow as nurture did (no pun intended with the "blow" comment). I'm not sure how much better off he would have been if we'd had him since birth.
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