We heart Dr. Seuss.
How ironic is it that the day after my wee little boy lifts 10 bucks from his dads bedside table, I come face to face, during the regular course of my work life, with someone involved in the break-in of our house over a year ago. Funny story (not funny ha-ha) that I can’t really share; but had to mention it because I thought the irony was thick.
So yes, Thor lifted money off his Dad’s table – and sometime there after came to me with a story of where it was “found”. I posted my dilemma on the forum, because we were fairly sure he had stolen it and I wasn’t sure I was taking the right action – didn’t want to back him into a corner, but also seemed like one of those things that shouldn’t be ignored.
For those of you who don’t read the forum (and why don’t you?); here is my correspondence with Vicki;
Morning,
So we have a wee bit of a thief – Thor has helped himself to a $10 bill that his Dad unloaded from his pants pocket onto his bedside table. Last night (when Dad was out) Thor came to me and told me that he found it in the woods “that time we had friends over”. It seemed like an odd time to tell me this, so my radar went up a bit, but at this point didn’t know about the $10 bucks on his Dad’s bedside. He asked what he should do with and I said “well I guess if you found it in the woods it’s hard to be sure who it belongs to and therefore difficult to give it back to them”. I left it open-ended on purpose. This morning in the space of about 10 minutes we heard two different stories of where it was found, once found at school and he asked his teachers about it and they told him to keep it and the finally story was that he found it at another schools playground. My feeling is to just let it go and hope that he fesses up to where it was “found”; but I just wanted to reach out to you in case you had some extra wisdom to impart.
Thank you, as always.
smss
Morning,
Miss you. Lets have breakfast okay. Yeah, I would let it go – knowing your child. ALERT - I am talking specifically to this parent whose child I know. So please, if you are reading this, don’t jump to conclusions about how I would deal with stealing if it was YOUR child. Ask me if you want to know.
I might also set up a situation where you could “lift” something that didn’t belong to you, but that you wanted and ask Thor to help you settle the moral dilemma you are struggling with. That will open up the conversation. And then I would bring it to Family Meeting around your value identification and mission statement and talk about all the ways it could destroy a family.
He is ready for this. Love that kid.
V
SO. I found myself alone in the car with Thor this evening and the little voice in my head was saying “DO IT”. Oh. It was such an un-natural feeling, and I am fairly sure that he picked up on that because at some point during the conversation about my dilemma he asked (I kid you not) “Is this story for real?”. Ugh. It wasn’t quite what Vicki suggested, I hadn’t actually “lifted” something from someone, but I explained to him that there was something on a co-workers desk that I really wanted and it was just sitting there on their desk, so I was thinking about taking it. He asked some questions like “what is it?”, “don’t they want it?”. I can’t remember what else he asked. It was all so strange feeling. He said that it was on their desk, so that it was theirs and wasn’t something I should take. I asked why I couldn’t, he said, “because maybe they will need it”. He did suggest that maybe I should ask the next time at work if it (and “it” was a vase by the way – lame, I know) was something that person wanted, and if not, maybe they would let me have it. So I think maybe I need to actually take something – well, pretend to – and give this another go. Because what this conversation didn’t allow was him helping me figure out what to do once I had already taken the vase/$10 bill.
