"Leaning Back in Chair"

Tyler Jeffrey Cluff is a handful... not only for us, but for his Kinder teachers too! We (working with his teachers) have resorted to an 'incentive chart' to help us focus in on improving his behavior. His teacher sends the report home each day to let us know how things are going at school. So, every day we have a little meeting after school and talk about what went well, and what we need to do better.

We are finding that often it is extremely difficult to reprimand him with a straight face, because the descriptions of his behavior range from somewhat comical to downright hilarious. Now, don't get us wrong... we recognize he's a handful, and I'm espcially hard on him, trying to get him to understand that its not acceptable to act this way and not listen to his parents and teachers. But, as his teacher said a couple of weeks ago at our Parent Teacher Conference "I have to reprimand him for standing on his chair, then turn my back and laugh because he's so cute and funny when he does it. And, he's never rude, never talks back, and is always genuinely remourseful when he has done something wrong... so its hard not to smile".

Below is a sample of what he has brought home recently...

(click on the picture if you can't read the comments on this page)

One of my favorites "touching"... 'nuff said




But how can you not forgive him with a smirky-smile like that?




This one really kills me... how can you have enough energy to not stay in your seat from 8am - 12:40 pm? Seriously... I get winded going from the couch to the fridge and back... how can he not want to spend a little more time in his seat? He's not his Fathers child... or is he?






Distracted AND leaning back in chair... rough day...




Go on Ty... give her the eyes... she can't get mad if you give her the eyes AND the smirky smile right?



Notice how the cards are changing now... just way too much work to monitor and report on all the "activity" she experiences during the day.

Running around


And loving every minute of it...




Pretty consistent though right?


Oh! Wait! What do we have here?!?!?!

YEAH!!! Fianlly Tyler has a "good day"!

Actually - this was his second "good day" since we started with the incentive chart/stickers. The first time was one of the little hippo charts at the top with lots of stickers. His teacher said that when she put it on his desk at the end of class he took it back up to her, and said "you're not done with this yet, there isn't much writing on it" When she informed him that she was done and that he got all his stickers that day he still said "are you sure your done with this? You don't have anything to write on here? I got all my stickers?!?!" When she answered in the affirmative, he couldn't get the smile off his face. She said it was sooo touching... and the good kind of touching this time!

Well done young man... keep up the good work!