Troublesome Children

What do you do with the children that test your patience to the limits? Not just push the boundaries every once in a while, but out and out push you to the max? I have had the *ahem* great joy of dealing with several children who do just that.

One of my children in Primary that has pushed me past any previously known boundaries is Christopher. Chris is your typical preteen boy--he loves to push the envelope, he loves to cause problems, he has zero interest in the topic at hand, and his pride and joy in life comes from figuring out the absolute best way to wreak the absolute most havoc in the absolute least amount of time. His tricks include yanking chairs out from underneath children as they went to sit down, getting up and stealing the visual aides and running off down the hallway with them, pulling on girls’ hair, raising his hand to answer the question and then instead of answering why he loves Jesus, going off on the statistics that he got on his video game that morning. He would frequently say (usually in the middle of me speaking) “Is it time to go home yet?” He would sing the words to the songs, but not the words that we were teaching him…on and on and on.

My first strategy was to just ignore him. If I ignored him, maybe he would get bored from the lack of attention, and instead find some other way to pass his time. He did, unfortunately, do just that, and the “other ways” that he found ended up being even more disruptive and destructive than his previous antics. Ignoring was not an option.

I tried sitting him in time-out--didn’t work. I tried talking to his mom--she didn’t do a thing. I tried giving him his very own notebook to draw in while the lesson was being taught, and although that worked for a couple of weeks, he quickly got bored and started back into his old habits.

So how did I deal with Christopher causing so many problems? Easy--I simply waited for him to graduate from Primary, thus passing the buck on to the Young Mens. At the time, this was a sound strategy, guaranteed not to fail. Time does steadily tick on, and some day (May of 2005 to be exact) Christopher was going to turn 12, thus advancing him from Primary to Young Mens. Unfortunately, my hubby got called into Young Mens almost directly after Christopher graduated from Primary, dumping the problem entirely into his lap. So now my hubby spends his Sundays complaining about Christopher, just as I used to spend mine. I just nod and smile.

Life is good.