The Conundrum of Consistency

We're in the midst of a parenting conundrum. Bub spent the week -- every day this week -- getting in trouble at school. Recently, a point was brought up about "his behavior pattern," and we have been puzzled since.

In general, Bub is your average, every day seven-year-old, and if you don't have one of those, they can be quite irritating from time to time. Our boy is the same as all boys -- he enjoys noise coming out of his mouth and other orifices, he likes to talk all the time, he gets wiggly quite a lot. The fact that he has ADHD exacerbates those normal boy behaviors around lunchtime before he takes medication, but for the most part, he's really no different than any other boy.

His teacher, Ms. G, is very sweet and she's been exceedingly patient with him through the learning of new routines and the changing of medications. She really seems gifted to teach little boys, she's enduring when it comes to those ADHD moments, and she seems to really care for Bub. We're grateful for her, and we feel blessed that he has her as a teacher this year.

During Open House, Ms. G brought up these "random" week-long occurrences of poor behavior decisions on his part, and commented on how odd they were. She observed the fact that he's really cooperative and obedient three weeks out of every month, but in that same month, he averages four or five bad days generally all clumped together. Until she brought up that point, James and I hadn't really thought about it, but her observation sparked a discussion between us.

Bub does great three weeks of a month, and then about one week a month, he "struggles." He comes home with behavior demerits for talking or for not following directions -- complaints which are vague, at best. However, despite the fact that he's just been in trouble at school, he comes home and behaves as well as he normally does, which is really quite good. Nothing seems out of the ordinary to us.

Now, don't get me wrong: Bub has bad days, as we all do, but it makes more sense when he has a bad day at school and behaves like a crazy person at home. There's a consistency there, and we know what to do with that. The confusing thing to us is when he has a bad week at school, but behaves normally (and sometimes better than normally) when he's home again.

So far, we've been consistent with our behavior expectations, and with consequences when those expectations are not met, but at this point, we're at the end of our redirecting rope. It seems that these solid "in-trouble" weeks occur about the same time and for the same length of time every month. To me it seems what we may be dealing with might have less to do with Bub and more to do with Ms. G, if you know what I mean. I'm totally speculating here, but his poor behavior decision days clumped all together and occurring at approximately the same time every month seem so coincidental. We're not one for excuses, but we're wondering if there may be a legitimate one here.

Those truly random bad days when rules are ignored and behavior is unacceptable, we have no problem removing at-home privileges or following through in other pre-determined ways. But what do we do with that cluster of days that seem to be less his fault? I'm absolutely certain that those days he gets in trouble, he's in trouble because he's behaving in a particularly irritating way, but could it not more that the observer is just more prone to irritability? How do we encourage improved behavior in that 25% window when he's behaving exactly as he does the other 75% of the time? How can we maintain consistency of correction here when it seems like there may be an absence of consistency in judging his behavior when he's out of our care?

Thoughts?