Skip to main content

The Wise Old Owl


Yesterday on the way home from picking Ethan up from school, I found a little green die in his book bag.  I took it out, showed it to him, and asked him where he got it.  He said, ‘I got it at school.  I liked it and wanted to take it home.’ I said, ‘But it’s not yours to take, Sweetheart.’  He looked worried.  I explained that its wrong to take things that aren’t yours.  Telling him, ‘Its called stealing and stealing is wrong.  You’re not in trouble this time, but if it happens again, you’ll be in big trouble’.  He said he was sorry, I told him it was okay, but he’d have to give it back in the morning and explain to Daddy what happened when he got home (just to reinforce that it wasn’t a good thing to do).  He asked if he could play with it when he got home, and as much as I wanted to let him, I said no.
That night, I had him tell his Dad what happened.  He explained that he liked it and wanted to keep it so he put it in his bag to take home.  He asked me to get it so he could show my husband.  I got it out of his bag and as I took it to him, I couldn’t help but find his fascination with this tiny item, precious and I just wanted to hug him and let him keep it.  He showed it to his dad and again asked if he could play with it.  My husband said no, reinforced that it’s wrong to take things that aren’t yours and told him it wasn’t his to play with.  The disappointment on his little face nearly broke my heart.
This morning, I took him to his teacher and had him give it back.  She asked, ‘Did you take this home by accident?’  I said no, he did it on purpose and he shouldn’t have.  Then, I thought better of it.  I realized what she was doing and quickly corrected myself saying, ‘Well since he didn’t know it was wrong I guess it was by accident, but he promised he wouldn’t do it again’.  She thanked him for his honestly and told him that today, he was going to be the ‘Wise Old Owl’ for the day.  She told him he was such a good boy yesterday and made such a good decision to return the die, he earned the title.
My son has come home every day from school telling me how much he wished he could be the ‘Wise Old Owl’.  It’s an honor given to the child who behaves the best or improves the most that day.  He kept telling me, ‘I’m just never good enough, Mommy!’  I kept telling him, ‘I’m sure everyone gets a chance, Baby.  You’ll get yours.’ He would say, ‘I’ve tried so hard.’  When he got the news that he would finally get to be the Wise Old Owl, (2 weeks is a lifetime for a child and he’s waited 2 whole weeks), his face lit up like I’ve never seen it before!  My heart swelled with love and pride (his teacher did tell me yesterday how well he had done) and wished I could stay to see him seated in his wise old owl chair, but I had to leave.
Just now, I ordered him a pair of green dice from Amazon to reward him for being the wise old owl.  I can’t wait to see his face when he gets them!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Top 20 Lists

Recently, a magazine here in the UK issued their list of their Top 100 women in show business. This sparked conversation between Wayne and I and one rainy weekend when we had nothing to do, we compiled our own Top 20 lists. The rules were we had to judge on looks alone (not their physique) and only one token model was allowed. For fun, I thought I'd add our lists here for you to view and enjoy. Maybe it will even spark conversation between you and a friend or loved one. Wayne and I actually had a really good time creating our lists together - judging each other's taste in the opposite sex and laughing over how long it took for us to prioritize our selections. We still change the order every time we look at it! (although our top five have remained the same) Enjoy and feel free to comment!

Fight Club for Five Year Olds - Part 2

The other mother and I went into the school to meet with the teacher and the assistant head.  We both let them know how upset we were that we were not informed that our children were sent to the office and how much we were against the children being allowed to play fighting games on the playground.  I told them I wouldn't allow it at home and I'm really unhappy that it's being allowed at school.  They admitted it was a problem and explained that they are planning to introduce a a scheme to teach the children to play in a safe way.  They will be calling it 'Super Hero Training'.  They plan to give out capes & masks out to children who behave well as rewards at playtime.  They will have assemblies where they will teach the children to play fighting games without making contact.  I find this to be absurd.  The problem has gone on to long and I doubt they will be able to teach little children to change their games when they have sixty other children to look after on

Playing with my new lens...

I got a new camera lens for my birthday last week.  I don't have a lot of time to play with it, but this is one of the first shots I took...