Hes already writting apology letters
I never punished at home for things that happened at school. We would have a chat about what happened and how it could have been handled differently (using it at a teaching moment) but really its up to school to deal with things that happen at school.
Welcome to mamapedia, R..
Might start by asking him WHERE he learned the behavior? If he got it at home? Maybe the whole house needs new rules and learn how to speak with out using foul words.
Otherwise, be the role model. TEACH him and SHOW HIM with YOUR behavior how to talk. He learned the words somewhere. Tell him there are better ways to speak and express yourself without using foul words.
Look and watch the movies and video games he watches and plays - if they have the language? You need to put the kabosh on it.
Have him write notes of apology to the people he said things to.
Then work with him on responses when he gets frustrated.
If he has "friends" that speak that way? Maybe he needs a new set of friends. Get to the root of the problem WHERE is he learning the behavior and WHO is encouraging it.
Could you elaborate? You'd get better advice if you were a bit more specific :)
When we've had calls over the years for the odd thing done at school, the school handles the 'punishment' (consequences) - either they're held in at lunch, or they're made to clean up something, or apologize to the child, etc.
Were the apology letters requested by the teacher or principal? If so, that's likely enough I'm sure.
We just follow up with a talk with the child later on at home typically.
what did your son say?
HOW did the school handle it?
I'd start by asking him WHERE he learned those words. Assuming he was swearing. You don't state what was said, so it's all assumption on our part.
Watch and listen to the friends he has. Most importantly, YOU need to model the behavior you want him to have. Kids are VERY aware. You behave how YOU want him to behave. He learns from you.
don't know, really, because there's no information here.
based on what you've posted, i'd simply reinforce whatever punishment the school inflicts.
if he has a bad mouth at home too, then there's more going on.
khairete
S.
Hard to know what to say when we don't know how he is mouthing off.
My mom's method for sassing was washing our mouths out with soap.
She kept a bar of Ivory soap just for that purpose.
My sister never learned her lesson and got an awful lot of that soap - but she hardly ever got any cavities so maybe it had an unintended beneficial side effect after all.
Writing apology letters is all good and well but it doesn't help him figure out how to avoid doing it again - writing a letter isn't a deterrent.
Mouthing off can be due to several things.
Lack of impulse control.
Lack of anger management
Lack of vocabulary - swearing is really just lazy language.
I think it might be good to work with your child to go over situations so he gets some practice in how to better handle himself.
"If Johnny starts calling you names, what do we do?
We can ignore it, we can tell the teacher, we can not care what Johnny thinks because he's being mean.
Not reacting to Johnny takes the power away from Johnny and gives it all to you." etc.
It's going to be a work in progress for awhile so be patient with him but keep working on it.
What has the school done thus far? More info, please.
Maybe instead of punishing him you could teach him good manners and more appropriate ways to speak and share his feelings and frustrations going forward. That's generally more effective.
If he's being raised around people who speak this way then use every opportunity to remind him how crass and immature he sounds when he makes these choices, and give him a good example yourself.
It's a little hard to be specific since you don't say what he said or to whom. Was he swearing?
Saying "I hate you?" Did he say this to kids, teachers, the administrators? What precipitated it? Did someone anger your child and he responded inappropriately? Or did it come out of the blue and you don't know the cause?
Apology letters are a good start, but it's important to realize that some kids think that an apology makes it all fine. It's not a do-over. It helps to understand that bad words stay "out there." There are a few versions of a well-known story about gossip (but it applies to any harmful or hurtful speech). You can google it or find it in your children's library - search for Gossip or Feathers in the Wind. There's a Jewish version and a Catholic version that I'm aware of, and there may be others. The point of the story is that a child gossips, and the adult in the kid's life says to open up a feather pillow and scatter the feathers. The kid does, and comes back to report this. The adult then says, "Great. Now go gather them up and put them back in the pillow." Of course the kid cannot, because the wind has scattered the feathers. The feathers represent words. Yes, the kid could gather up some of them - which is what an apology letter does. But the rest of the words, like the feathers, are out there, and can't be taken back.
It may be that the best you can do is to provide a good life lesson for going forward. This, of course, is the purpose of any punishment or consequences, but sometimes seeing another person's actions (such as identifying with the kid in the story, or better yet, the victims in the story) is even more powerful than losing TV privileges or play dates.
I would have the teacher deal with this in the classroom. Of course you should teach him manners and such and writing letters is a good thing. But the teacher needs to be able to manager their classroom and give him consequences there.
