Dear Pana,
Styles of parenting are often different between parents. My kids are College age, but I went through conferences with teachers.
I am not clear if you are still with your husband, the father of your son in second grade.
One of the things that helped my marriage was taking parenting courses. By my wife and I at least having he same phrases to talk about things, we did better.
I also post on CHADD, chadd.org. Children and adults with ADHD. Your son may not have ADHD, but some problems in school may be similar. It is $45.00 for a year to be able to access the CHADD message board. Parents post problems with children and school.
Compliance is an issue that is suggested by Gerald Patterson, 1987, as a means of preparing the child at home, for school.
Patterson suggests keeping track of how many requests you are making of your youngster, per hour. Patterson finds studies that show that immediate compliance is a key factor for parents to achieve, to prepare the yougster for school. This may mean letting some activities slip for now, so that you can get immediate compliance for everything that you do ask.
Perhaps cleaning up chores can be left for your husband to manage. If you are getting your 2nd grader to do everything he should be doing, you are probably over-requesting, and your second grader is probably not giving you immediate response for every request.
One intentional, or unintentional, strategy of schools, is to get the parents to blame each other, and then the school is off the hook. You could approach your husband and stress the importance of a united front. Your husband's response indicates that he feels your approach to discipline is different than his. My wife and I often agreed that one parent should be the contact person with one teacher.
Patterson suggests getting the positives in place before loss of privileges or assigning punishments. Patterson suggests that short punishments and short losses of privilegs are more effective that stronger punishments. Consistency, and sticking to your word are important.
Discipline should primarily be a positive reinforcement process. I try work with my wife to think of snapshots of good actions, for us to give praise, "Thanks for picking up the dishes off the table." Your husband's response indicates little understanding of finding positive rewards for getting increased performance from a 2nd grader. You may wish to review the rewards that are actually being realized. The attention from dad may be a reward.
Son's perception: "Why do any shooolwork when mom asks, since if I delay doing it, I can get attention from both Dad and Mom.
Thanks for your post to Praying. Jade and I have been talking on essentially the same subject she started, but I checked her name, and she has not posted again.
Best wishes,
Quipper
Married 28 years and still struggling
