Work Before Play

My son is a 9-year-old 4th grader. He is doing remarkably well this year. He made the honor roll last quarter and his teacher was thrilled. She spoke highly of him during conferences telling me how he's the best of our family to come through the school to date. She also said he's the most well-behaved in her class. A very honest student, she remarked. If he doesn't study for his spelling test but still pulls a 100% on Friday's test, he'll admit to his teachers that he neglected to study.

I am very proud of all the hard work he is doing this year. Second quarter just started last month and it is not yet half way through. However, we just received bi-weekly progress updates for him. So far he is getting straight A's in his regular classes. In fact most of the grades are A+ except for two which are A-. Not bad for being a quarter of the way into the second quarter. I'm not going to push him but now I know he can reach high levels.

Anyway, he has always been the type of kid who slacks off. He puts off doing his homework. We really have a lot of trouble with him. He's been a lot better about it though.

In October, his teacher assigned an extra credit research project. I was told that he is quite good at researching. The project was on the history of skiing and snowboarding in our state. He needed to make any project he wanted too. It was due December 1. Anyone succesfully completing the project would receive a passbook for the ski resorts in our state. He wanted to do it. I explained to him that projects like this needed to be worked on everyday.

In November, his teacher mentioned to me he had a science project due on December 2. The topic was Neptune. He had to write a detailed report including drawings and bibliography. He also needed to make a project.

Everyday he would put up a fight when I mentioned doing the projects. He would use the excuse that he needed to go to the library. I would remind him that it was too far away. We have a computer. The teacher's ran of copies from books and sent them home. He had everything he needed but insisted on playing. His father was of very little help in getting the child to work. I reminded him about his brother and cousin who put off the same project until the day before and they stayed up late to get it done. It didn't faze him.

November 30, he sat down and worked on his skiing project. He made a trivia board game out of the facts he collected. He finished around 7pm. When he came home the next day he announced he aced it.

December 1, he got to work around 4pm on his regular homework which took him about an hour. By 5pm he was working on his Neptune project. He stopped long enough to have dinner. Then he continued working until 10pm. He got most of it done and finished the final touches in the morning.

When he came home the next day, he told me his teacher had postponed the due date for the science project until December 10th. He forgot to tell me and she never sent home notices. The good news is he got a paw ticket for handing it in early. A paw ticket is part of the school's behavior intervention system. It reward children for good behavior. When children have collected a certain number of tickets they can redeem them for prizes.

During all of this, my son looked at me and said "Mom your right, I should have started sooner 'cause I'm waisting all my fun time."