An H. On the dinning room table. The table that was custom made now has an upper case H. Then I found this:
Apparently the H wasn't good enough so she felt the need to make a new one, this one was indeed up to her standards and so followed it with her whole name...all in caps!So here's the question: What's the punishment for this crime? We, as parents, believe that the punishment should equal the offending action...we're at a loss here...any suggestions?
7 comments:
whoa... oh, no. the custom made table. was it intentional or did it come through a paper she was writing on??
I think it's sort of sweet and it is the finishing personal touch for a custom-made table. This is just what I think. Just tell her not to do it again and I'm sure she won't. And years later you guys will be really fond of her 7 yr old name carving.
man oh man oh man. i can't think. does she know you know? oh man oh man...
she did it with a sharp pencil just to see what it would look like.
i agree, i don't think she will do this again but i still think she needs to have some sort of follow up on this. giving her a pass because we believe she won't make the same mistake twice doesn't sit right with me.
in the end i borrowed a bit of parenting from a friend and had h write me a letter explaining why she did this with a promise to never do it again.
i thought of having her clean the table daily but i sure don't want her to have cleaning as a bad thing in her mind...know what i mean? taking care of the house should just be part of our daily life, not a punishment...
I think the letter idea sounds like a good one. I think I have PTSD from my mom's weird policies with her very meticulously-kept house which we'd get in major trouble for if we actually "lived" in it. haha! Not to say that carving your name in furniture is standard run-of-the-mill living in the house, but my mom was pretty extreme so I'm still recovering from that. heh. It's so hard to figure out the right way to handle stuff like that.
A couple times I've told Judah "I'm giving you grace" when he deserved punishment for something and then I explain that grace is when you don't get what you deserve. In those instances it seemed to really resonate with him and I felt good about it. But yeah, so much of the time it's really difficult to gauge what my response should be.
You should've used a sharpie and wrote your name on her forehead. But in cursive, instead. And wrote it backwards so it's not confusing when looking in a mirror to brush teeth. (what's 'refinnej'?) And wrote 'jenny', not 'jennifer', cuz that would be too long.
Then again, maybe that's a bad idea. 'Jen' would be fine.
dude! i totally shoulda done that...you're so full of good parenting tips scott.
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