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My son has been secretly stealing chocolate and then getting inside a little box seat thing (it’s got a lid and space for toys inside, but it’s currently empty) and scoffing them. It would be the perfect plan and he would have gotten away with it too, but he foolishly left the foil wrapping from these particular sweetmeats in the box. And had also chosen to steal chocolates that his sister had been keeping since Christmas.
Although he insisted he was not to blame (I think he blamed a monster at one point, but I am not even sure a monster has been in our house since Christmas), it wasn’t hard to pin it on him. I had to deal with a daughter who was distraught that her chocolate sprouts were gone (and would be difficult to replace off season), but a little boy who it is hard to reason with and who is only following his natural instinct to steal chocolate and eat it inside a box seat.
It was a rare case of sibling argument where I could come firmly down on one side. Phoebe had done nothing wrong and was the victim of a crime and unusually hadn’t take the law into her own hands and attempted to murder the thief. I needed to promise her retribution, whilst also punishing the miscreant and more importantly, help him to understand why what he’d done was wrong.
Ernie is a very sweet boy. He loves to share (his sister is less keen) and loves hugs and he loves to have fun. I will be very upset when the world crushes his spirit and tries to tell him he shouldn’t play with dolls or wear nail polish (I had to tell him not to do that the other day, but only because he was wearing it on his eyelids) and I even feel bad for crushing the mischief and (to be fair) common sense, that makes him want to steal chocolate and eat it. It’s hard not to laugh at how badly he’d committed the crime - if the wrappers had gone in the bin he might never have been caught (I suspect Phoebe had probably forgotten about the chocolate sprouts and chocolate coins, which would explain why they were still around in late January). But I had to be stern and serious and make him understand how bad he’d feel if someone ate his chocolate without asking. You know, if he had any chocolate. Which he never would, because like his dad, he’d have eaten it all.
I think I got through to him this morning. I think he understood. But even that makes me a bit sad, because I like having a mischievous sprite in the house who doesn’t really understand why the world needs any rules.
He was banned from having any more chocolate today - I used to get chocolate once a week, so I should be fuming that someone gets punished by losing cocoa privileges for 24 hours - and I promised Phoebe we’d find something for her that would make up for her tragic loss. I was harsh, but fair. It was a parental triumph.
The night before I’d been talking to Phoebe about Liono, the sister of our cat Smithers, as we’d discussed buying pets from ethical sources. I told her how Liono and Smithers had been bred by a disreputable person, who had wanted to get cute fluffy cats and then when these siblings had turned out to be deaf/stupid and small and infirm, just thrown them out. I asked her if she remembered Liono (they were great friends, but Phoebe had been very young when Liono passed) and she said she did. I said it was very sad when Liono died and Phoebe said,”What? She died?”
“Yeah, you knew that.”
"I thought she’d gone to live with another family!”
Shit… “Yes that’s right. She did.” I corrected myself.
“Then why did you just say she died.”
“I don’t know. I must have gone crazy for a moment. She went to live with another family.”
I couldn’t work out if going along with that was worse. Why would we cast her out when she was our pet? Surely the true story was more honourable, if sadder. Why had her mum (presumably) lied about it? It wasn’t my fault that things had gone so awry
I somehow convinced Phoebe that Liono wasn’t dead and got her off to sleep. But that hadn’t been such a great parenting victory.
Except today Catie told me that she’d never told Phoebe that Liono had gone to live with another family. Phoebe had made that up, possibly after watching a TV show where a family claimed that’s where a pet had gone. Maybe she’d somehow melded that story in with her own. Or more likely, I think, she was just playing around with that idea. She knew Liono had died, but wanted to play the part of someone who had been kindly lied to by their parents.
Whatever the truth, parenting is complicated and there’s tricks and traps all the way. I enjoy pretty much everything these two do, whether it’s right or wrong. It’s nearly always fun. And it’s such a crazy journey as they become sophisticated enough to understand morality, to bend it, to ignore it, to follow it.
Never-ending fun.
