Child Rearing....

So last night was the parent teacher conference for Maddison. I was not looking forward to it for the simple fact that she has had sort of a rough semester behavior wise and as a parent I of course feel responsible. I had gotten her grades in the mail that day, and new that they were mostly A's with just a couple of B's, so it's not like I was worried about that, just the socializing that has been getting her into to so much trouble, that her teachers have called me and they actually had to take some disciplinary action. Now I do take some issue with the fact that her teachers can't figure out something to keep her in line, I mean if she's getting A's, how bad can she be. Well I hadn't seen Maddison all day when I went, because I had to work Jack's parent teacher conference for PTA, and I just went straight to Maddison's, having not talked to her yet. Well, surprise, surprise, the first thing her teacher says is, did Maddison tell you about the trouble she got into today? Uh no, I haven't seen her, well she got caught cheating on a quiz.:( So she then proceeds to tell me that she let the boy sitting next to her cheat off her, and they got caught. Now I know this is probably going to qualify me as a bad parent, but I had just the slightest bit of pride upon hearing this, because I was the kid who cheated of the smart kids, and clearly Maddison is one of the smart kids. So I am supposed to go home and come up with some kind of punishment for being the smart kid, and I gotta tell you, it's hard. I'm sure all parents have these revelations that they just don't know everything, and well as my kids are getting older, so are their problems, and I just don't always feel equipped. Honestly, she's being punished at school, so I really don't feel like me doing anything else is really going to make an impact at this point. So we have not punished her yet, she knows we're dissappointed, not that she cares, but we told her we will think about an appropriate punishment. This child rearing thing stinks, not knowing all the answers is one of the scariest things to realize as a parent.