Step by Step | Correcting Attitudes

Hemos tenido una semana fatal, realmente todo se ha salido de control, mi hijo está comportándose bastante grosero en la escuela y además esta bastante distraído perdiendo sus cosas, ha tenido una semana llena de castigos y tareas por hacer. Hoy fue el único día que no estuvo castigado porque al fin se porto bien… Pero no ha sido facil, me he preocupado bastante con cosas que he visto que no me gustan para nada y si no corrijo a tiempo estas actitudes el niño va a crecer creyendo que tiene el mundo a sus pies.

We've had a terrible week; everything has really gotten out of hand. My son has been acting quite rudely at school, and he's also been very distracted and keeps losing his things. He's had a week full of punishments and chores to do. Today was the only day he wasn’t in trouble because he finally behaved himself… But it hasn’t been easy. I’ve been really worried about things I’ve seen that I don’t like at all, and if I don’t correct these behaviors in time, he’s going to grow up thinking the world is his oyster.

Desde hace un tiempo mi hijo ha perdido sus colores, sus borras, lápices y si no los pierde los gasta rápido sacándole puntas como loco, hemos gastado un dineral en lápices, pero ya me cansé, lo amenacé con castigarlo y esta vez no lo perdió, pero si lo trajo super pequeñito, asi que igual tuve que castigarlo. Pensé que el lápiz era nuestra única preocupación, pero luego me enteré de mas cosas.

For a while now, my son has been losing his crayons, erasers, and pencils—and even when he doesn’t lose them, he wears them down quickly by sharpening them like crazy. We’ve spent a fortune on pencils, but I’ve had enough. I threatened to punish him, and this time he didn’t lose them, but he did bring them back super short, so I had to punish him anyway. I thought the pencil was our only problem, but then I found out about other things.

Y resulta que tenia un “mejor amigo” de un día para otro tuvo mas cercanía con otro compañero de clases con el que se encontró hace una semana en un parque y desde ese momento decidió que simplemente reemplazaría a su mejor amigo actual por este nuevo amigo y esta en todo su derecho de elegir sus amistades, pero comenzó a tratar mal a su antiguo mejor amigo solo porque al nuevo le cae mal ese niño. El niño se me acerco un dia y me dijo que mi hijo lo trato mal le dijo dos groserías y le saco el dedo de en medio, quede en shock porque mi hijo nunca dice groserías.

It turns out he had a “best friend,” but overnight he became closer to another classmate he met a week ago at a park. From that moment on, he decided he would simply replace his current best friend with this new friend—and he has every right to choose his own friends—but he started treating his old best friend badly just because the new one doesn’t like that boy. The boy came up to me one day and told me that my son treated him badly, swore at him twice, and gave him the middle finger. I was shocked because my son never swears.

Mientras mas indagaba en ese tema mas me indignaba, mi hijo me decía que ya no quería a ser amigo de ese niño porque tiene un nuevo amigo, que aquel niño era POBRE… POBRE… ¿Qué? Como si nosotros fuéramos ricos, y aun asi si fuese el caso no nos da derecho de llamar “Pobre” a NADIE, no se de donde saco ese comentario tan feo, pero eso fue lo que terminó de colmar mi paciencia y el castigo fue peor, lloro bastante y no le pegue, solo le quite su juguete favorito y le hice creer que lo bote, hable bastante con el y le explique porque esta mal decir esas cosas de otras personas.

The more I looked into it, the more outraged I became. My son told me he didn’t want to be friends with that boy anymore because he has a new friend, and that the other boy was POOR… POOR… What? As if we were rich—and even if we were, that doesn’t give us the right to call ANYONE “poor.” I don’t know where he got that awful comment from, but that was what finally pushed me over the edge, and the punishment was harsher. He cried a lot, and I didn’t hit him; I just took away his favorite toy and made him think I’d thrown it away. I talked to him at length and explained why it’s wrong to say those kinds of things about other people.

Comienzo a creer que esa nueva amistad que tiene es quien le dice esas cosas tan feas, realmente no lo sé, pero no voy a permitir que siga ese camino, los castigos cada vez se ponen peores, ayer paso todo el día aburrido, sin celular, sin computador, sin tv, solo haciendo tareas. Hoy por fin se ha portado mejor y le dejamos jugar un rato en la computadora, pero tenemos mucho en que trabajar para que no tome esas actitudes tan groseras e impulsivas.

I'm starting to think that his new friend is the one telling him those awful things. I really don't know, but I'm not going to let him go down that path. The punishments are getting worse and worse. Yesterday he spent the whole day bored, without a cell phone, without a computer, without TV—just doing homework. Today he finally behaved better, so we let him play on the computer for a while, but we have a lot of work to do to keep him from acting so rudely and impulsively.