Another lesson learned

You know how sometimes words don’t come across like they should; and you need to teach a lesson another way?  Well I did just that on Monday. And it seems to have worked.

Puppy was in his usual frame of mind when I picked him up from after school care.  He was asking for this or that, but mostly he was asking to buy some tape at the store so that he could make and tape his paper sleeves to the wallet for his credit cards. His wallet only has one surviving sleeve that managed to survive the scissors, and a flip-it from another wallet that holds cards on both sides of it, and is held onto the wallet with a glued piece of paper at both ends. (I really need to work on learning to add pictures.)

However, as it turns out, he has been going around the house for about four days searching for loose change and not to mention he basically stole my counting jar of change to successfully collect a total of $9.92 to use. To my son, that is a whole lot of money. But to me it’s a pain in the butt, because he's letting his imagination run wild. He wants to buy a wallet, a watch, a credit card holder, tape, glue, faded blue jeans from Academy, etc. This is a birthday wish list, not items you buy with $9.92.

Well like I was saying, I picked him up and he was asking to go to the store, but he forgot he left his money at home. So he quickly searched his truck door handle; that's where he puts change, and he came up with $1.27. He asked if I would take him to buy a tape and didn’t care that he didn’t have enough money. But we parked at the store and I talked to him. If he finds tape, goes to the register and has enough money, then it’s his. If not, I’m sorry. He probably didn’t even hear a word I said and was just itching to jump out of the truck. I could see him through the windows walk over and smile as he found the tape. He waited for two customers ahead in line. Then I saw him put the tape back in its place and walk out of the store. But he wasn’t too sad and his head didn’t hang low. He got in the truck and said, “Mom, you were right, it cost too much.” And even, “My wallet is fine just the way it is, I don’t need tape.” This of course brought a big smile to my face with a saddened heart. I could have given him the money. But what lesson would I have taught him? 

This lesson might have worked this time. But as I’m typing my blog I am laughing out loud all by myself. I just remembered he may have tricked me this morning. As we were going over the places he could use his money at, like school book fair, or the candy store at school…he asked if he could put it all in a Ziploc bag to ask his teacher’s permission or suggestion for how to spend his money. Yep, it all seemed so innocent this morning. I will probably be writing a follow up to this story of how I stopped at the store on our way home, haha!