I wonder if the kid wil ever tumble to the fact that the best way to reverse the loss of privileges due to school attendance problems is to JUST GO TO SCHOOL. Earn back the screen time,the access to gadgets or services, etc.
Heck, we’d evenbe willing to talk about new gadgets or an allowan raise if he’d JUST GO TO SCHOOL
He tunes out online school, he doesn’t listen to us enough to homeschool him, and it’s not like we’re going to hire a prvate tutor to teach him a full 6th grade curriculum.
So we’re stuck with trying evey morning to convince him to walk out the door, and he pulls up his best Bartleby impression, occasionally pausing to throw a tantrum
which is great for anyone else’s ability to think, too.
we’ve encouraged him, we’ve tried to address things he’s complained about, we’ve reminded him when it’s pizza or orange chicken day, we’ve bribed him with the promise of Coffee Bean snacks. We’ve reminded him that he gets more computer time the more of school he attends.
We even reminded him that the classrooms all have air conditioning. It was something like 95, humid, gloomy and windy. AC would have been nice!
And that we can get in trouble too.
The only thing that kept him from getting kicked out of 5th grade was his IEP, which acknowledges the whole not-wanting-to-stop-preferred-activities(like being at home instead of at school) and staff who were trying to help with the whole process.
But tactics only work once, or work for 2 weeks and stop
I describe it as rotating shield frequencies to keep up with the Borg’s adaptive weapon.
At least he’s figured out that if he gets caught using the hack against MS screen time limits, he’ll be in more serous trouble. Or that may just be that he hasn’t had the place to himself except on days when he actually *did* earn screen time and doesn’t need to.
He used a Linux boot thumbdrive to get at the file that manages MS Family Features and deleted it.
We now have a pinky promise not to misuse it.
I’m torn between impressed thathe figured out which file to remove, howto gain access to remove it, and checked to see if it worked. And that he told us instead of keeping it secret.
I mean, he’s learning. He’s problem solving.
But I wish he’d put some effort toward walking though the wide friendly doorin front of him and learning how to deal with school intsead of trying to tunnel under, climb over, or phase his molecules through everything else trying to get the screen time without school
it would be so much easier if he either was willing to go to school, or was willing to actually *do* an online cirriculum instead. He’d get education AND a full afternoon of Satisfactory (his latest game obsession) AND time tohang out with hisonline friends on a device where he can play the same games instead of just watch screen shares from zoom.
And we’d have time during the day to get stuff done.
And not be getting official warnings about truancy and its legal consequences.
Ugh, sorrry, evenings seem to be turning into ranting times when I don’t pick up a book.