I learn a lesson, too

It was definitely my turn to learn a lesson. Keep two or three steps ahead of Puppy, if possible. He’s a clever one. As you are probably waiting to read, did he or didn’t he pull one over on me? Yes, he did. 

I picked him up from after school care. He had his list of items he still wanted to buy with his now $11.18 since last count. I needed to stop to buy some dog food, so I made a deal with him. No wallets! No tape! And he was in agreement, so I drove us to the dollar store on our way home.

I went towards the dog food and he went to search for whatever. I went to the front of the store with my 14 lb. bag and he met me there with his Ziploc bag filled with loose change in one hand, and a watch in the other hand. Remember, it’s the dollar store, so a watch was only $8.00 plus tax. It seemed like a good deal…he gets a watch, he uses $8.66 of his money which brings the total down considerably, so it was a done deal!

I had also picked up Domino’s Pizza on our way, so we were set for the evening. I asked him to set the watch aside until after supper and then we’d open the ridiculously awful plastic packaging it came in. He knew that if he listened, he’d have the watch shortly and so he complied quite nicely. 

He gobbled down his pizza slices and soda. Then with a quick rinse of the hands he was heading upstairs to tear the plastic wrap. But we were able to stop him from doing it alone and possibly getting all cut up in the process. Ms. H helped him get the watch out and he was excited. He didn’t notice that I was just as excited to not have him talking about his wallet for a few minutes. It’s a short distraction but a safe one as long as he doesn’t start asking for more and more watches.

So on this day, I was the only one learning a lesson.

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!