Setting A Child Straight – Part 2
Categories: Léo’s Insights 2024-2025
Last time, we discussed how student records are handled and how one can see patterns of behaviour when studying the contents of those records. By that I mean not only a student’s behavioural issues, but also those of a school which is funded at a higher rate when students are deemed “special needs.”
The particular student being discussed in this episode had gotten to a point of no return at the school he was attending. He was so bad, the school had run out of possible issues for extra funding. In desperation, the boy’s parents removed him from the school, determining to educate him themselves at home, and enrolling him with us. As a result, we visited the family and got to know why this child’s student record was such a long “rap sheet”.
My immediate observation was that the boy was just another ordinary child. A bit chubby, but not outstanding in looks or demeanour. I also caught an attitude of defiance which seemed to have his parents baffled. The family had invited another family to join us for the facilitation meeting and what happened next was classic. The boy sat in the most prominent chair in the living room and quickly set about misbehaving in a young teen rebellious fashion and telling everyone what to do. What he and the others didn’t know was that I had a lot of experience dealing with exactly what we were witnessing. I verbally subdued this rebel and had him acquiesce to my authority so quickly that his parents and their guests were astonished.
That was the problem. No one had stood up to this fellow so he acted out both at school and at home. It turned out that while he was not an academic learner, he was not lacking in intelligence. He had been unquestioningly sent to school before he was ready and made to be a dummy. He had learned to play along with the school’s faulty expectations of him and he acted out, bringing his coping mechanisms home where his parents were also duped into believing he was a bad boy.
What the bad boy needed was two things. The first was quickly demonstrated by me when I verbally asserted my authority and put him in his place, something his parents had failed to do. The second was to inform him that since God had made him the way he was, he could learn things just as well as others, but in his way and in his time. He eventually found his place.
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