020 - Fibbing

[captain_slinky]

Molly is "On Restriction" for the next week for "fibbing" about her homework enough that her teacher had to contact us, and it ends up that she is all too much like me at that age for my liking.

Her problem was that she would start her homework at school, and then figured that she could probably finish it the next day before class or during recess. So she would stow it away in her little cubby hole at school or in her backpack with the intent of finishing it as son as she could.

Of course, because she's got MY blood in her, those half-done homeworks would then disappear never to be seen again.

Rather than own up to it, she "fibbed" her way through it. She would tell US that she had plenty of time to finish her homework at school, and would tell THE TEACHER that she must have left her homework at home.

I spent every day of my life from the middle of the Fourth Grade till my last day of Senior Year in High School living this lie, so I feel her pain and her shame. I know that terrible feeling of KNOWING the lessons, being able to talk through the lessons with the teacher and even teach other kids how to do the work - but be failing the subject because of disorganization.

I don't know how to fix this for her :(

All I know is that the way she's dealing with it - the way *I* dealt with it as a kid - doesn't work, and we need to try something completely different.

The silver lining, though, is how she dealt with this. After all the crying and apologies, she agreed that her punishment is fair (one week with no computer, video games, TV or other electronic entertainments except those that we do as a family - a disciplinary tactic we skimmed off of aquatwo that has resulted in one of our absolute favorite teenagers of all time) and hey, it'll give us more time to play board games!

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[whiskeyjack.livejournal.com]

I took Sabrina to the office supply store and helped her put together the most amazing, customized day-planner where she got to pick out all the pieces, and decorate them and set it up exactly the way that she wanted, in a way that she found intuitive and useful and then really, really, really got her used to living out of that planner. I showed her several organization methods first so she could see what felt natural to her. (She was a few years older than Molly). If you went bigger - to maybe a notebook size - it could work for holding the assignments themselves.

For assignments that are getting physically lost the options seemed to be: 1. practice always putting them in the same folder every day and not losing the folder (marginally successful). I think we used a green folder for 'still to do' and red for 'turn me in' 2. *I* keep track of assignments for her. (kinda worked but made me hate my life). 3. get fast enough that you can do the entire assignment in the 15 minutes before class starts after you realize you've lost it. (worked for me as a kid, not for Sabrina). 4. let it go. (WIth Sabrina she was completing the assignments in front of me and then they would magically vanish before getting turned in. Since I knew she had done the work I tended to not worry about it so much.).