Monday, November 10, 2008

I've Learned My Bad Parent Lesson!

So, I was taking my nap yesterday, yes, I try to take one each Sunday to prepare for the rest of the week, when Jon brought Joe upstairs and sat him down on our bed. Joe, at this point, is looking very wary. Jon tells him to tell Mommy what he did. My heart sinks. I hate, hate, hate having to punish the kids. I do it because it is necessary, but I now totally understand what my parents were talking about when they would say "It hurts me more than you" each time I would get a spanking when I was a kid.

What did this cute little angel do, you ask? Well, he took the can of gasoline (Bad Daddy for leaving it out!) and dumped a little into the dog's water bowl. And if that wasn't bad enough, he then took the matches that Jon had been using that the wind blew off of on top of our big grill, and threw them into the water/gas combo. Thank goodness he didn't light the matches first.

Jon caught him, thinking it was way too quiet in the backyard and quickly figured out what had happened.

I was appalled listening to the story. Not only could he have seriously hurt himself or Joci, but he could have easily killed the dogs, too. We sent Joe to his room while we came up with a punishment.

I am proud of Jon and I in this...we did not yell or spank, we quickly came up with what we thought was a suitable punishment for Joe. First, he had to stay in his room for a long time out, almost an hour. Then he had to apologize to and then hug the dogs. Side note: I was upstairs in the bathroom when I heard Clay wander into Joe's room, a second later, I heard Joe telling Clay that he was sorry, it was so sweet! Lastly, he has to help Daddy and Mommy clean up the house for our Team party on Saturday.

As for us naughty parents, well, we've learned our lesson too, and it's one that I wanted to share. It's easy to get lulled into thinking that your well behaved child should know better than to get into things he shouldn't. Now we are going to be that much more careful about putting things away like we should.

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