Creative Parenting

Out of all our kids, we have had the most e-mails and phone calls from teachers about Garret (some really good, some not so much). Lauren chose to do her questionable activities outside of school, Chad just does what he is supposed to, but Garret, he' s another story. On the same day as he received his National Honor Society packet, we got an e-mail from a teacher and a letter in the mail from school outlining his detention. Ironic, right? Granted, detention is for using his cell phone in school (second offense), could be worse, but the e-mail was from his teacher in his Foods class (I mean really, can't he just behave in a no-brainer class like that?) outlining his juvenile activities that are disrupting class. So Rich had a long talk with him, explaining that every school year we have this conversation. I was out for the evening of this conversation so Rich reserved the right to discuss the punishment with me. Grounding seemed the only logical choice, so we brought this up with Garret. He said that grounding really wasn't effective, he had already apologized to the teacher, and felt bad about what he had done (not sure he felt bad enough, but that's just me). So Rich must have been channeled by his dad, and came up with a pure Dick Christen moment! Garret has to be at school every morning this week at 7 a.m. for a 30-minute detention before school, so Rich said the best thing to help Garret think about what he had done was to get up at 6 a.m. every day while he has detention and look up verses in the Bible that have to do with obedience and obeying authority. I couldn't say it at the moment we were talking to Garret, but I was in awe of Rich's brilliance! Once in awhile he gets it exactly right, this is one of those times.