Abruptly Jerked out of the Zone

Well, a call from the school will do it. I actually made it over 4 hours though and got quite a bit done.

Last week John and I had a conversation where he was pointing out how fun it was to be able to leave school grounds for lunch. I told him that nobody else in our family was able to leave school grounds at lunch time without asking. He had a big argument with me. I told him that I would make a deal that he could continue to have that privilege until I got a call from the school. he told me that if he got in trouble he would lose those privileges anyway. I just reiterated my stand.

Apparently today someone saw him smoking at lunch time. Since we know he isn’t smoking here and he hardly ever leaves the house or yard (unless he is sneaking out at night, which I believe is entirely possible) we have never smelled smoke or seen him smoke. But apparently he did on his lunch hour. So for a month he can’t leave school grounds and he loses the opportunity to play baseball for the next two weeks. Now he has to practice and not play, which will be hard for him.

At least we have learned that we can’t control what he does. Even though it makes it hard to sit back and watch him screw up, I can’t exactly go to school with him and make sure he doesn’t do anything wrong. He is a follower, and the friends he met are the ones he met through Mike, so now that he is back in public school, I’m sure that is the crowd he is hanging with. And now he has consequences at school. There will be no more at home because there is enough to consequence here. Our family policy is that school has natural consequences for behavior and poor performance, so we don’t consequence at home for school stuff for anyone.

My immediate response is to begin to fear where this will all head. The weekend with John was almost unbearable. He had to be re-directed about 10 times an HOUR and it was exhausting. If he doesn’t have a parent spending time in the same room with him all the time he initiates trouble. And that adult has to be giving him undivided attention. All weekend I just kept telling myself that if we could just get through the move and he could get a job things would be better. But if things start to fall apart at school, then I’m not sure we can add that pressure to all the rest and still maintain any kind of equilibrium at home.

Heavy sigh. I think the ZONE has been left for good for today and I am not going to be able to reach my 5 p.m. goal...