Question
Our ten-year-old fourth grader is still refusing (see last year's questions) to bring home or do his reading and spelling homework. It has been almost 9 weeks of school and we just had an early "emergency" parent/teacher conference. First, he lied about what homework he had, then he left it at the after-school program, now he just doesn't bring it home. We tried lowering the boom on him last year, with no success. We have implemented the suggested rule of all homework has to be done by 8:00pm, but what do we do when his assignment book (which HAS to be signed as part of his grade) clearly says "spelling list, pg 2" or "read "Weekend Plans" and there is nothing in his backpack?
We are not adverse to letting our son face the natural consequences here. However, what do we do when his school and teachers are constantly badgering us to "help your son!"? We can't sign his reading slip when no books come home, we can't mark his assignments as DONE when we haven't seen them.
I am out of ideas since nothing changed last year except my level of internal anguish...
Our son is already in a mandatory after-school program and intervention during school because of his reading problems and was in summer school for six weeks. I KNOW that he can read if he wants to! I have witnessed it firsthand! Should we give up and let him fail fourth grade or barely scrape by? He has already failed one grade (1st) and it didn't seem to bother him. We don't want him to think that just passing is okay! Please help, we don't want to have a 20-something high school student...
