Just had a phone call from school ... :/

[Dotty_woman]

My middle son's head of year has just called me to say that he has been caught trying to steal a milkshake from the canteen at school. A few months ago he was going through a cycle of getting a lot of comments in his planner for forgetting homework, messing around in class etc but it seemed to have all calmed down. Apparently the teacher says he took it because he didn't think he had enough money on his food card to pay for it. When the canteen staff challenged him it turned out he did have enough money after all. What the hell was he thinking? If you haven't got enough money then you go without. End of story. He has already been grounded until the summer holidays starts for accidentally killing 2 frogs in our back garden by hiding them in the barbecue on a hot day. He seems to have spent most of this year grounded for one reason or another (for him this involves loss of computer/gaming privileges and going to mates' houses. The thing is, I don't think that this form of grounding is working. I'm really upset about what my son has done but I really need to make sure this doesn't happen again. I need to nip this in the bud before it escalates into anything worse. I'm sure his dad is going to do his nut when he finds out and I'm worried about how he is going to react. I'm thinking he needs to apologise to the canteen manager whilst I'm there at the very least but I need to come up with something more constructive to move forward. He's 13 and has a new baby sister (7 months) so I'm cautious he could be after attention. Unfortunately not the type I really wanted. Any advice would be appreciated. xxx

 

[MrsLM]

Have you tried sitting him down and explaining how proud you are of him but this behaviour isn't acceptable? Maybe ask him why he is doing it? Obviously not shouting at him. Ask him if he'd like some mum time? Maybe your OH could take your baby for two hours on a Saturday morning and take him to the cinema or something?

Does he have a Television in his room? Or a game console you could confiscate for the evening as a form of punishment?
He's just hitting his teens,so he might be doing it for his 'peers', he might have found the frog incident funny and blagged about it to his friends? Or he might just be experimenting his boundaries etc.

Good luck. X