When your kid forges your signature

In My Humble Opinion
41

Just as a semi-aside here - and I think it’s important to note for the record that I have no children (yet - first one due in May!) and so my opinions are, on the whole, less informed than most of yours - I’ve never quite agreed with the practice of making children do things like writing essays as punishment.

When I was a kid, my mother and father never assigned me an essay as punishment. Then my mother divorced my father and remarried, had two kids with my stepfather. The latter was in love with the essay-as-punishment plan, so my brother and sister spent a lot of time writing little treatises like the one Dinsdale describes. By this point, I was a little too old for that sort of thing. What I saw was that while I came to love writing, treated it with care and attention, my brother and sister viewed it - appropriately enough - as a punishment, something they had to do when they did something wrong. Certainly they never enjoyed writing (and I’m not saying that the use of that particular punishment tool was the only reason for that, but I think it contributed), and it showed in their schoolwork.

  • FCF
42

Daikona is on to something here. In order to get the essay with over as quickly as possible, your daughter’s going to write what she thinks you want to hear. You’re teaching her the art of BS, which is a valuable skill indeed, particularly as she enters higher education, but it might not be quite the lesson you want her to learn.

43

As a 7th grade teacher, few things come to mind:

  1. Why did you tell her the forgery was OK? That’s lying to the teacher, essentially. The message you want to send, if I read you correctly, is that lying in general isn’t OK. It’s going to be tough for you to have her tell the teacher she forged when you said forgery was OK, or for the “No Lying” rule to pack much punch when you endorsed one form of lying and not another. I hope you’ll rethink this-- as a teacher, it makes me cringe.

  2. Writing as punishment can lead to negative feelings about writing, as someone else pointed out. Maybe a letter to you and Mrs. D apologizing for the the deception, and a letter to the teacher explaining what she did and asking that she lose the credit she got via the forgery? You could also call the teacher yourself, explain that the kid was punished at home and ask that she not worry about further penalty. If I got a call like that from a parent, I’d definitely oblige.

  3. Be sure to tell her that all she had to do was call you and you’d have called the teacher to vouch for the assignment without the signature. You want her to feel like she doesn’t need to lie, that you’ll help her out if she forgets something. Otherwise, all she’ll do is become more clever about her lies.

  4. No TV and vids for a set amount of time, like 3 days. That one always gets 'em where they live.

IMO, you are not overreacting. This is a breach of trust between you and her, and between her and her teacher. I think it’s good that you’re taking it seriously and addressing it with her in a direct way. Don’t blame yourself for making her feel like “the bad one.” She is the one who made a bad choice.

Good luck!

44

I’m a Senior in High School, and I forge my mother’s signature all the time, because I always forget to bring the sheet home. However, I always tell her afterwards, and tell her what it was that I wrote her name on, and she never cares.

45

Ivylass: I would trust my daughter and my son with my life. They have both had access to my checking accounts with in excess of $5000 since they were about 16. Neither has ever taken undo advantage. The most they have ever used with out express prior permission was lunch out with friends, about $25, which they offered to pay back if I wanted.

46

IIRC, Dinsdale’s other threads show that this is a problem child, lots of lying and manipulation, no interest in schoolwork, not so well socialized with other kids. Hmmm. What a tough decision to make.

It’s around this time, 7th and 8th grade, that kids get old enough to make really bad choices. Honestly, it sounds like this child could be setting herself up for a defiant and delinquent high school career.

I’m wondering if some counseling, individual and family, would be a good idea. From what Dinsdale has written before, it sounds as if this kid is unhappy on some level. Maybe even some low-level depression, since she prefers video games to socializing, which seems like a form of withdrawal.

Maybe she thinks she’s dumb compared to her siblings. Maybe she feels judged by the family because she is different than the others. It sound like it’s a fair guess to say she’s deeply angry at some level; she may not even really know it. It sounds like Dinsdale and his wife are solid parents, but that doesn’t preclude that these things might be happening.

I was a withdrawn kid who refused to work in school. And it was 7th grade where this behavior started to coalesce. I was just waiting to get away from my family and do drugs, and that’s just what I did for 23 years.

So I guess what I’m trying to say, Dinsdale, without coming across as too alarmist (sorry if I do), is that IMO this kid needs help and attention sooner rather than later. If this behavior goes on too long, her defenses will be ever harder to get by.

Good luck and keep us up to date.

47

A few things, as the potential punishment laid out in a few posts are in line with what I had to do as a child.

Firstly, essays are incredibly annoying, but I don’t recall one that ever changed my behavior for the better. I just worked harder at not getting caught (which, I would assume, is not the purpose of the exercise). The essays got longer (100 words became 500), and by and large the only fruitful change that came about was that I became increasingly proficient in writing for a while and BSing, two things I continue to use in varying quantities to this day. But again, I don’t think that was really the point of the exercise.

I have also forged my father’s signature (with his permission) for many, many years. I think I was in second grade when I was doing it reliably. We always told him what field trips and such were happening (in the sort of “Hey Daddy we’re going here!” way, not “Father, I must report to you a scheduled departure from school grounds from 1000 hours to 1500 hours on 5 November 1991”), so he wasn’t left in the dark.

His signature was almost as illegible as his regular writing, so really anyone could do it. Today my signature is almost identical to his. No teacher ever asked if my father had actually signed the permission slip, or whatever it happened to be that I signed on his behalf.

You want to encourage your daughter to be open and forthright with you; what you don’t want to do is merely encourage her not to lie. The difference is that with the former, she tells you stuff without being prompted (the degree of this will obviously vary in great amounts depending on the people involved), whereas with the latter she only tells you stuff if you ask. The more you can get your kids to do for you (well, to a point;)), the easier parenting is. Of course, sometimes you end up as I am; I tell my parents a lot more than they want to know:D

Toward that end, find out from her if it was just her forgetting or if Mrs D was unaccessible in an uncommon (or a common) fashion. Was there a lot on her mind that got placed ahead of having the paper signed? Is she unaware of the reasons for that specific part of the assignment (there has been a growing trend in at least the past five or so years in public schools for parents to sign various documents)?

Keep communication lines open. The way to do this is not to treat the effect but to figure out, to the best of your ability, the cause. Had my mother been more diligent in her punishments (she had four kids to take care of, which is probably part of it), she might have found out that I was throwing balls in the direction of the house because nobody in the family would play with me (my brother is 6.5 years my junior and my father was not been able to throw a ball overhand in well over ten years). Instead she just wasted my time and hers.

Ultimately it’s the decision of you and your wife. But rather than only trying to think of an appropriate way to punish her (or focusing largely on that), you might consider figuring out what, if anything, hampered her. Identifying the cause may make life much simpler for all of you.

48

Wow! That was a lot of work getting to this page! Hope things clear up some time.

Thanks again, all, for your thoughts.

TVeb and Guin, yeah, same kid. Now 12.5 in 7th grade. And Guin - we went on that ski trip last time, and got rid of the blankets. (We’re going skiing again this weekend - and to SLC in March! Woohoo!)

Regarding the assignment, she was supposed to interview her mom about what Ms D appreciates about modern technology. Ms D remembers M asking this almost in passing, Ms. D said she liked her microwave oven, and that was that. M certainly did not “interview” her as the assignment required.

Upon reflection, Ms D agreed with me that M should inform her teacher. We had her redo the assignment, and hand it in. We told her that she could tell the teacher whatever she thought appropriate. But we also wrote the teacher a note we had her give in a sealed envelope, and return signed. (I THINK that is the teacher’s signature! ;)) We wrote that M had panicked because she had not fully completed the assignment in time, and previously handed it in without our signature. Asked her to accept this or not, whatever was her policy. The teacher was really cool, said M admitted what she had done and sincerely seemed very sorry, and gave M 1/2 credit for the assignment.

The essay thing worked really well for us. She didn’t do it right away. And it was no problem, because until she wrote it, she simply wasn’t watching TV or playing vidgames. She finally wrote a draft on Sat. aft. I made a few minor corrections, she rewrote it, and I accepted it.

I was pleased with it for several reasons.
I think she made some progress into really thinking about why she lies in situations like this, and understanding the impact her lies have on others.
Having me edit it gave me an opportunity to respond thoughtfully to her concerns.
We now have a record of what we covered - if there is a next time, perhaps we will not have to recover all of the same ground.
I also was able to express upon her that even if she finds herself caught in a ie in the future, to not compound it with additional lies.
If nothing else, she wrote a nicely written, well-organized paper, which is not a bad thing in itself.

FTR, she says she is not sure of the real reason she lies. But in certain situations she gets scared and panics. She is worried that people at school and at home won’t think she is perfect. And she ends up getting depressed from this stress.

I think honestly expressing such things is a good first step towards addressing them.

What business does she have thinking we expect her to be perfect. I am certainly enough perfection for any one family! :smiley: