Monday, July 28, 2008

Bubbles

Once there was a child who was supposed to be babysitting.
She was supposed to make sure her brothers didn't burn the house down or drown in the bathtub or flood the hallway or make giant messes in the 10 minutes her mother was gone.
She was very good at ordering her brothers around.
Until she went in the garage and lit matches and burned things.

Once there was a mom who found a mess of burned paper, coated with carpet powder, all over the garage.
She was cranky and upset and most of all, freaked out that there were burned scraps of paper near gas cans and fertilizer and oil.
She asked all of her kids to tell the truth and fess up.
No one did.
Not even the child that had been left babysitting. That child blamed it on her brother.

And then mom figured it out.
And now that child has had her mouth washed out with soap for lying. Lots of liquid soap.
She is also residing in her room for a few months days.

Once there was a mom who needs a better punishment to get the point across on all levels of this disobedience and poor decision making. Please comment and share your thoughts.

9 comments:

knittinandnoodlin said...

Wow. Just. Wow. What a frightening discovery!

You're one step ahead of most of us...you figured out who the culprit was in short order. We're still trying to figure out which of the munchkin's friends jumped out of the second-story bathroom window and fell right through a weak spot in the deck. *sigh*

As for an appropriate punishment...residing in the room and a good long talk is probably severe enough, as long as there isn't a tv/computer/phone/video game/etc. in there.

3littlemen said...

Akk, thats never good! I'm sorry its one of those days for you today. We have days like this more and more often it seems. :(

The good news is, nobody did get hurt. Lets hope she has now seen the error of her ways!!

The Katzbox said...

Maybe an extra course on chemistry....combustibles...you know...

But it sounds like she got the point

Adara Kaylee Jones(: said...

ahhhhh. i never played with matches

Roberta said...

With a bunch of boys over here, we have had similar problems. When Dal and Ev were 9 and 7 they told the baby siter that they were supposed to practice with matches for scouts. She believed them (needless to say, we never called her again). We got home to find burn marks on the dining room table. The boys were restricted from fire for a year...which included blowing out birthday candles.

frizzlefry said...

Knittin- couldn't you tell by the child who was injured? How did they manage not to hurt themselves? SIGH. KIDS!

Roberta- Wow. Just wow. I hope it wasn't my daughter that fell for that when she was taking care of your younger boys!!! Your older ones are pretty smooth talkers. . . :)

kEllY said...

Oh, Melissa! I just don't know what to say. We did have an incident with lighting a firework in the house, the smell of smoke was undeniable along with the much burned bath towel which was used to put out the flames. This child lied for a while and then fessed up after we had a family meeting where I made a handout for everyone which had all the dangers listed of what could have happened to the house the baby he was suppose to be watching, etc. By the end of it, the culprit was in absolute tears. No doubt who it was! I let him decide what kind of punishment he deserved and he was much harder on himself than I would have been. I was mostly surprised at who it was... ;)

It is amazing to think that we could really make it through raising children????

Adara Kaylee Jones(: said...

heres another story! I was doing fireworks with the neighbors and of course there were about 5 teenagers and both parents were inside. well the teenagers thought that it would be cool to take off the wrapping. and it was one of the ones that went up and exploded like at Disneyland. then they stuck the firework in upside down. it exploded and burnt my thumb. i still have the mark. all i can remember is my hand shaking and a kid crying. but i saved a little girls face from getting burned. so that was the only good news.

Jen said...

Please tell me that you told this child about Carl burning down the yard next door. I'm sure he'd appreciate being used as an object lesson.