This post is more to convince myself than you, so just humor me ok?
My son has been consistently slacking off this year at school, making sure his grades are barely passing, if we’re lucky enough for that at all. Since March the boy has only been allowed outside sparingly on the rare instance that all his grades are passing or a milestone was accomplished. When we found out he passed the TAKS test was one such occasion.
However, despite the rule in our house being “Failing grades = no outside/freedom/tv/fun” this child is unfazed. I vowed to him over a week ago that if he didn’t pass all of his classes at the end of the year he would be grounded the entire summer and have to do manual labor around the house, such as scrubbing baseboards, cleaning cabinet doors, and other tasks I can think of that are completely unnecessary and totally obnoxious so maybe we won’t repeat this lazy attitude towards school next year. He’s on track to fail one class for the entire year I’m sure of, but Social Studies, Science and Language Arts are all failing grades for the final six weeks of this school year. But as the summer for him draws closer (next week) the more I feel bad about having to take away his summer in this way.
I always keep my promises though and that is something I’ve been very diligent about throughout my son’s life so the poor child is going to find out what life is like for those that don’t try hard enough to succeed. Manual labor, doing a job he does not like or want to do.
It’s so hard to be consistent when you really don’t want to exact the punishment you promised in anger.
Any suggestions?
