An eye for an eye

This past Thursday, I was washing clothes and found one of MY classroom Lego men in the dryer. Huh? How did that get in there? I asked a little 8 year old boy (a.k.a. Elijah) that plays with them almost everyday after school if he knew anything about the little Lego man.



He said, "Yes, I put it in my pocket and took it to my classroom so that I could show my friends that I had a Lego man too."



I told him that was stealing because he did not ask me and that he did not return it either.



He looked at me for a minute, scrunched up his eyebrows and said "Can I go outside to play now?"



So needless to say, I didn't think he got the fullness of the lesson I was trying to explain to him. I told him that stealing is wrong and that he wouldn't like it if I stole something of his.



Again he said, "You are right, may I go now?"



He went outside to play and I am ABSOLUTELY sure that as he exhaled he let the memory of "stealing is wrong" out with the wind.

Sidenote: Do you remember being a kid and racing your siblings to the 'good' cereal....(the one with the most sugar) to be the one that gets the cool toy inside? Yeah, Elijah has never experienced that!

So on Monday evening (after Elijah went to bed) I dug in his Lucky Charms cereal box, pulled out the racecar he had been waiting to fall inside of his cereal bowl, neatly cut the plastic bag it was in, 'stole' the car, put the EMPTY plastic bag back inside of the cereal box, shook the box and put the box right back in the cabinet.

Tuesday morning Elijah said, "Yes, Mom! I am almost at the bottom of the box and I know the racecar is going to fall out today!" He has been eating on this box waiting for the car to fall out for 4 days now.

--- the empty plastic bag fell out on top of his cereal

--- he picked it up, looked at it inquisitively and said, "Mom, the car must have fallen out of the plastic.....I am going to pour more cereal until the car falls out. (What a great problem solver!)

--- He emptied the box and said, "I don't know what happened to the car."

--- As he looked at me and held the empty plastic bag, I told him that I stole his car because he stole my Lego man a few days ago. I asked him how he felt about it.

--- He looked at me, wrinkled up his eyebrows, tightened up his lips and with one finger at a time clinched his hand together and balled up the empty plastic bag.

So again I told him that stealing was wrong and that I felt the same way when he stole my Lego man last week.

He then said, "I know that stealing is wrong and I am sorry."

Now before you comment on this post:

1. Don't judge me.....it worked!