I'm trying to make sense of a few sad choices that Robert made yesterday...
...he hopped over the back fence
...ran through the block
...raided our neighbor's garden for tomatoes
...and tried to sneak back without me noticing
I'm simply exasperated. Robert can't stand tomatoes. He loves our backdoor neighbor. He knows it's wrong to leave the fenced backyard without permission. What on EARTH did he hope to accomplish?!
I do know he was not alone, but it's hard to know how it all played out. He tells his side of the story like this: his friend wanted some tomatoes, so he told them where to find some. His friend hopped the fence and went looking for the neighbor's garden, but couldn't find it. Robert decided to hop the fence and show his friend where they were. I caught them red-handed as they were all coming back to our yard.
Why didn't Robert come tell me the kids were hopping the fence? Why didn't Robert find anything wrong/illegal/untoward about this whole scenario? Or, if he did know it was wrong, why did he go through with it anyway? Later, Robert told me that this wasn't the first time he and his friends had stolen tomatoes from our neighbor's garden. This was just the first time they had been caught. And he was really sorry he got caught this time.
Really?! Argh!
This is something I'll be able to laugh about in the future. Right now, I'm wondering whether his moral compass is broken, or if I've neglected his moral upbringing, or if I've just gotten lazy and depended on Alice to tell me whenever he was starting to make a sad choice (Alice wasn't outside with the kids yesterday). Why wasn't I out there supervising their play? Well, Robert doesn't hop the fence when he's alone or with Alice. He acts differently when he's with peers and I keep forgetting that.
So, what did Bobby and I do about it? Well, Buddy got a time out right away and the friends were asked to leave. He is earning money through chores to buy replacement tomatoes for our neighbor, which we will be delivering by hand with a formal verbal apology. He lost my trust, though, which is what hurts me most. I can't even trust him to play unsupervised in our own backyard?!
One part of me just wants to punish him and make him suffer for
embarrassing me and scaring me. The better part of me knows we need to understand how he saw the situation. The end goal is to help him make better choices in the future, right? It's good we get to practice this while he's four. Maybe he'll get it down before the consequence for poor choices gets much, much worse.
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If it makes you feel any better... as a mother there have been times where I have CLUNG to the doctrine of the age of accountability. I think he's perfectly normal and he's going to turn out just fine! But I know how you feel. Did you love the story at Conference when Pres. Monson told about how he started that wildfire? I took great comfort in that one!
ReplyDeleteI think he is pretty normal too. We are at the stage where "no" is a great game, and they smile, laugh and shake their head when they see me make a disapproving look and shake my head. It vexes me greatly. They push and hit and little miss has started biting her brother, who now has bite shaped bruises all over his arms. (I'm really looking forward to our upcoming well baby appointment.) Buddy is at that age where it is all about pushing boundaries and trying to figure out what really is right and wrong and WHY. He won't get it first go either, it will take a lot of trial and error and heartache, but he is normal. It is exasperating, but normal. ;)
ReplyDeleteYep! I agree with the foregoing. Normal and learning.
ReplyDeleteRight on track as far as his moral compass goes. The four- and five-year-old will be sorry that they were caught, not that they made a wrong choice.
ReplyDeleteSounds like you've got a little Peter Rabbit on your hands! :) Bet he was going for "independent problem solving" (a little too independent) and "empathy" (aka being a good host).