Slamming my head against a wall...

Why? Because it feels SO good when I stop!

Seriously, there are times when I honestly feel like that's what I'm doing. Speedboy came home with his progress report for the 2nd trimester...

Now, remember - back at the end of the trimester, end of November, we got his grades, and found that he'd flunked all 3 of his core classes. We told him at that point he needed to buckle down and start turning in stuff, quit futzing around, or he wouldn't be tourneying with is this summer.

His mid-term progress report is worse than his original trimester grades! It's as though he's deliberately flunking his way through school! As of yesterday, everything (and I do mean EVERYTHING) that can be remotely used as a toy has been taken away from him. All games have been pulled from his computer, and he's restricted to his room until he knocks this crap off.

According to him, his math teacher specifically has it out for him (grudgingly said that it happened to other students as well), and has lost his paperwork that he's turned in, causing him to fail his class... This would be a heck of a lot more believable if he were passing his other classes - which he's not - or turned in all of his work for said other classes - which he hasn't. So - on top of his normal homework (which honestly isn't more than an hour's worth most evenings), we're also assigning him all the chapter study guide questions in the book for each of his classes, and for math he'll be going back and doing ALL the math problems, not just selected ones, for each chapter assigned to him in class.

Overboard? Maybe - but honestly, we don't know what else to do. It's against the law to follow through with corporal punishment (much as both Fred and I feel sometimes it could be worth it), and obviously simply talking to him hasn't gotten anything. I'm going to be writing a letter to all of his teachers letting them know what's to be expected of Josh should he finish his work prior to class being over (no reading "fun" books, he's to do class-related work), and also during homework club should he finish with his normal homework.

I'm also going to be suggesting that he, his math teacher, and his counselor all sit down and try to figure out why he feels that his math teacher is "ganging" up on him constantly, and hopefully get to the root of the issue of why he feels he doesn't have to turn in his homework.

Bah!

~M