Given that it doesn't sound like the homework actually matters in any way, it does sound like borrowing trouble to make a big deal out of it. Pick your battles, wait it out, see what happens at real school in the fall. I can see the reasoning.

That makes sense to me msbelle. Let the teacher work out the consequences within the classroom, and that frees up you to focus on helping mac to find better ways of communicating his needs to you.

I agree. And I think Mac knows the difference between Summer and "real" school and that the homework rules are different.

Can you nice people please remind me that I should never read the comments on newspaper articles?

Because these comments leave me blind with rage and tears.

It's an ongoing problem, the hope that your neighbors will turn out to be rational people saying intelligent things vs. the past experience that the people who comment in newspapers are raging fools.

Connie, so, so true.

There's an ongoing case around here re: some people in Southern Utah who were arrested for stealing Indian artifacts from public lands, where half the people are saying "What? No one was using them, if they were valuable someone would be taking care of them, why the big fuss over a bunchy of old pottery/textiles/bones?" and half are saying "Get your felonious mitts off our nation's heritage, you dipwads." I'm pleased with the people who ware being dumbfounded that anyone is defending the practice, but horrified at the number of people who simply cannot see that anything wrong has occurred.

To add to the drama, one of the high-profile arrestees was a beloved doctor in the small town, and he committed suicde the day after his arrest. Then another suspect committed suicide two days later. The doctor's wife and daughter have put in for a plea bargain. The local idiots are bewailing how a wonderful man was hounded to his death over something so irrelevant as the stuff ancient Indians left lying around. Turns out some of that stuff "lying around" was in graves, but, hey, that was so long ago, who really cares?

Feh.

Between "pick your battles" and "striving for some level of autonomy" let it, um, lie seems reasonable.

The only experience I have with a seriously lying kid is when I was a camp counselor. He was 13 or 14 and was lying CONSTANTLY and the biggest problem was that is was causing real animosity with the other kids.

So the kids, who were sweet kids, came to the counselors about it. We talked it over for a while and decided that he didn't really LIKE lieing any more than we liked being lied to. So when "Jimmy" would lie we all agreed to respond, without any anger, "Is that true, Jimmy?" and more often than not he'd cop to the lie right there and it was done. A couple of times he was telling the truth and they took him at his word. He pretty quickly laid off the lying and the kids pretty quickly started liking him better and including him more.

So here is the part where it might have some bearing on the situation at hand...

At the end of the two weeks when his Mother came to pick him up we took her aside to let her know what had happened. She was glad we did because it turned out that Jimmy had been adopted at four. Before that he had been horribly neglected and abused WHO knows how and when she got him he was something like feral. He couldn't or wouldn't speak or make eye contact, he flew into rages, the works. In the ten years that Jimmy had parents they'd worked and loved him very hard and he really had thrived. He had caught up in school, he was making friends. He was basically a healthy and happy kid.

The lying was actually something he had progressed beyond some time before. He regressed somewhat in the new situation. He was anxious and was trying to impress the kids. Turns out the tactic we'd gone with, just calling him out calmly, was one of the things they had done to help him get over it initially.

So my completely unscientific thinking would be to call him out gently. "Is that a lie?" I doubt it'll work in a week (since it certainly took longer with Jimmy the first time) but it might start to free him up since he might not like lieing any more than you like being lied to.

msbelle, I think that's a perfectly good way to handle it. It's acknowledging that you know he's not telling the truth about it but since it's not a huge deal (and doesn't affect a grade) maybe he'll be comfortable when he realizes he doesn't have to lie about it. That's a big step, right there.

Cashmere - insent in a sec.

and everyone, thanks for the ears and ideas.