Stealing

Gulp. Big deal. BIIIIG deal. Even when the item in question is small potatoes. The kids have definitely 'borrowed' things from each other from time to time, but until last week we've not had either of them take something from anywhere outside of their house (that we know of!).

Monday afternoons find us at Atlanta Swim for the kids' lessons. Once they finish the lesson, they may have earned the privilege of visiting the treasure box. Inside there are stickers, erasers, small toys, etc. Very close to the box are many other boxes with candy. Last week Eli earned the Treasure Box, so I let him go in by himself and pick something out. Sometimes there is candy in there, and on this particular day I asked Eli to NOT choose candy. No problem, he came back a minute later with a small eraser for his pencil. The rest of the afternoon went perfectly.

Fast forward to 10PM when I sneak into the kids' rooms to kiss them before I go to bed. Eli is snoring on his pillow, next to a half-eaten push-pop candy that is now stuck to his pillow. Busted. I knew exactly where it came from because there is no other place we'd been that carried such an item. I asked Lehr to talk to him at breakfast about it and I'd handle the big consequences when he got home. (Lehr said Eli's eyes popped out of his head when he saw Daddy pull out the candy at breakfast.)

When Eli got home from school we had a quick snack and then got down to the nitty gritty. Eli swore that he didn't know it cost money. I can believe that. However, I reminded him that it wasn't in the main treasure box AND I'd asked him to not get candy. If he honestly thought what he was doing was ok, he wouldn't have hid it from me. We talked about writing some sentences and then I informed him that he would be bringing the money necessary to cover the cost to the store the following week for his lesson.

While Eli didn't like it, he accepted all of this pretty well. As the week went on, however, I got nervous that Eli would hem and haw about actually apologizing once we arrived for his lesson; he is typically not comfortable talking with adults, especially those he doesn't know. So when the weekend arrived, I checked back in with him to make sure he still had his $1.06 set aside and to see if he knew yet what he wanted to say to the cashier. He assured me he had it covered. I took that opportunity to let him know that we would allow 10 extra minutes before his lesson for the apology, but that he needed to be on time to his lesson. If he was not able to do what he had to do by his lesson time, he would miss it, and he would then have to pay Lehr and I $20 to cover the cost of the missed lesson.

Monday arrived and Eli got his bag of money. While in the car I asked him to review quickly what he would say, which he did. I knew he was prepared, but I still didn't know what to expect. When we walked into the store, Eli walked right over to the counter and handed the cashier the bag, telling her, "Last week I took a push-pop and didn't pay. Please forgive me." It was a little rushed, but he looked straight at her and spoke loud enough for her to hear him. Really shocked and really proud. We struggle a LOT with Eli looking adults in the eye when it's a serous matter (even us), and everything about his apology was correct. I know he was nervous as heck because his leg was twitching, almost like he was keeping time with his knee, but he still did it.

One last thing: Eli asked me just before we left what would happen if the candy ended up costing less than we'd assumed. The line of questioning sounded a bit like he was planning to ask to buy something with the leftover money. Not cool. I quickly redirected him, saying that we were going to present them with this money and hope that they accepted it rather than calling the police because of the stealing. His eyes got big and he backed off.