J-Boy went on strike. Turns out that the rough week he had (I think I referenced it here) was because he decided there was no point to doing school work if he wasn't going to get anything out of it. He would actually say to the teacher, "What are you going to give me for it?" when she would hand out an assignment, but this was after going through some painful, non-verbal shutdowns that seemed to come from nowhere and last most of a day. This is where the "token economy" of his Special Ed program seemingly began to backfire.
After the conference with his teacher, I broached the subject with my dear son. "Is that true, J? Did you really say, 'What are you going to give me for it?'??" "Yeah. They used to always give me stuff for doing work." Well, true. In second grade he could get bonus points just for getting out of the car on his own without having to call "trained staff" to firmly but gently muscle him to class. And in third grade he could earn 2 minutes of Nintendo DS time for each page of work completed, to be used only when 10 or more minutes had been credited. Now in fourth grade, the goal is to work on getting him slowly integrated back into a mainstream classroom environment. That process starts with incremental changes in the expectations of him in the Special Day Class.
I went on a small scale, animated rant about how I don't get a Pokemon card everytime I load the dishwasher, and I don't get a Pokemon card for every load of laundry I do... "Good point," he calmly concedes. I see the opening so I hone in on my target. "But I do get to have some free time to do what I want to do after those 'have-to's' are out of the way. And at school, you get the same deal...it's called 'Fantastic Friday'. And if all your work is done and you have high behavior points you get to go to the special Fantastic Friday stuff, right?" "Right." "So you are getting something for doing your work. You're just getting it on Friday instead of right away."
"Oh. I think I get it."
His daily points this last week have been 99, 100, 92, 93, 99. Wow. Not to say there won't be other issues that crop up. But, wow. He does get it!
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