Choices -> Consequences

In Bug's literature course, the unit we just finished focused on choices and consequences. Which was probably good, because he seemed rather confused when I asked him what the consequence was when one of the characters made a good choice. He seemed to think that consequences only came with bad choices.

Well, that doesn't really have much to do with the topic of this blog post, but it kind of does at the same time. Because today, Bug made a very very adult choice, and he astonished me to the point of nearly being speechless.

The virtual academy that we enrolled in does daily (often with more than one each day) what they call "class connects." Basically it's kind of like a group Skype call that has tools and other things where the teacher can show a power-point kind of presentation and have basically an online class. Well today when Bug was logged into one of these class connects, I came downstairs and found him playing a game on the internet instead of paying attention. Naturally, I scolded him, and told him that we would probably have to block the website he was playing on. He knew when we installed a blocker program that that was the deal-if he doesn't do his work and plays instead, we'll block the games.

Anyway, he finished out the class connect, as far as I knew, and about fifteen minutes later he came upstairs and talked to me.

"My teacher and I made a deal," he said. And I'm thinking.... what kind of deal? What are you talking about? "She let me color for seven minutes," Bug continued, "as long as I would listen to the recording and send her an email telling her what the class connect was about."

They always do a recording of the class connects for kids who couldn't make it at the scheduled time. At this point, I'm connecting logic together and asked, "Wait, did you tell her that you weren't listening?"

"Yeah," he said.

I didn't tell him to tell her. I didn't say anything that even suggested that he should tell her. In fact, doing such a thing hadn't even come to my mind at all. He chose to do that all on his own, and left me speechless while he continued to talk about what he drew on the class connect program.

He also said, "It made me feel really good. Because the teacher let me color."

I took that to mean that he felt good because he wasn't punished by telling the teacher what had happened. And so, with his good choice, I gave him a good consequence. We didn't block the website he was playing on.