Tuesday, December 9, 2008

She LIED to us

So, lately Ms. R has taken to "making up stories" at school, with her teacher and speech path. When I see them, they are more than likely to ask me things like, "Are you planning on going to Hawaii?", or "Is your family volunteering at animal shelters?", "Did you make that sweater Ms. R's wearing?". First of all, yes, Jerry and I have talked about going to Hawaii, some day. Maybe. Hopefully. We'll see how the next 5 years goes financially. We surely haven't said anything to Ms. R about it. I passed that one off as her confusing Illinois and Hawaii. Trying to give her the benefit of the doubt.
The animal shelter thing I kind of understood, as I'd taken B-man and Ms. R to a number of local animal shelters when we were looking for a new cat. Maybe her story got confused or the teacher didn't understand exactly what she was trying to convey. These are the excuses I gave the teacher and myself.
Made a sweater? Hahahahhahaha. That one is the most laughable of all. Right. Pearl one, knit two.
Last week I mentioned to Jerry that it was odd that Ms. R hadn't passed off the level she has been working on at math, as she gets all the questions right every time when we're working on them at home, but always misses at least one at school. So he sat her down and asked her about it and she confessed she was scared of passing this level because the next would be hard. I then brought home a copy of one of the next levels work sheets and had her do it with out telling her it was from the next level. Once again, she got all of the equations right. After pointing this out to her, I encouraged her to work harder and pass this level so she could move forward. Jerry raised the stakes by telling her that if she didn't start getting 100% on work we KNOW she can do, her TV privileges would be taken away (her favorite thing in the whole world to do, like father like daughter). I was unable to monitor her progress on this front because he set these rules down the night before I was to start attending the Autism conference, but took faith in the fact that she knows what 100% is and could tell us. Two nights in a row after returning from the conference she proudly told me she'd earned 100% on the math work sheets and we did the happy dance, high fived and generally carried on like she was fantastic.
Yesterday afternoon, upon returning to my regular routine of volunteering in her class I was confronted with a horrible reality. She had lied to us. Twice. I was angry beyond words. So what did I do? Reprimanded her in front of her teacher and set down the law - I am going to triple the punishment time, then add a day just for good measure. That's right, 7 days of no TV. Ms. R's nightmare come to life. Don't mess with me, I'm a mad mom.

4 comments:

The Bui's said...

What is it about that age! Lying is all of a sudden cool! I catch Alyssa embelishing on stories all the time. So Frustrating.

mom said...

Its part of the learning process, all kids have to see how far they can go and what they can get away with.

Dawn said...

When I tought primary for that age group in the manual was a whole paragraph about how when a child hits that age they start to lie...alot...most outgrow it and it is just them learning boundries/using their imagination ect. My problem is that some DON'T outgrow it!!

Anonymous said...

I think lying is a natural step. I would lie to my mom a lot and tell her I was sick just so I could stay home from school! I hope the punishment gets her to stop lying though! Good luck!