Make Your 8 Year Old Cry And Teach Him A Lesson

It's Friday morning. It's 7:20AM. I'm at the table shoveling oatmeal into Grayson's mouth, shoveling some kind of cereal into my mouth and trying to get Claire to shovel cereal into her mouth, which is always a fight because the kid all of a sudden has an aversion to food. Ethan is gingerly eating his cereal, and then pipes into this fabulous conversation here. And, in case you don't get it, E is Ethan and M is me. You're welcome.

E: Guess What?

M: What?

E: Yesterday, I rode a bike with S (neighbor kid) without my helmet and I did great! I didn't fall at all.

M: You did what?

E: (Face realizing he shouldn't have told me that) Well I didn't get hurt.

M: I don't care you didn't get hurt. The rule is you ALWAYS wear a helmet. ALWAYS. Another thing, you didn't come in and ask me to unlock the shed for me to get you bike. Did you borrow on from S?

E: No, I went do the hill and I found a bike.

M: What do you mean you found a bike?

E: I borrowed it.

M: Who did you borrow it from?

E: I don't know their name.

M: Did you ask if you could borrow it.

E: No.

M: So, you STOLE a bike?

E: No, I borrowed a bike. I put it back.

M: It doesn't matter that you put it back. If you didn't ask, that means you stole it. You know what? No bike for a week. That's not even good enough though. I'm going to talk to daddy when he gets up about this.

When David gets up, I talk to him about it. He takes Ethan's TV out of his room. Then we wait. At 3:30PM, Ethan walks in and David tells him to go to his room. After 5 minutes, David goes back to Ethan's room. Ethan asks where his TV is, and David tells him that someone decided to borrow it without asking. He then goes on to say that the cops found out that Ethan stole a bike and were going to come to the house and arrest him for doing so. Ethan laughed and thought it was a joke. David was like, "No, they're really coming. People who steal go to jail." Then he made me come back to tell Ethan he was going to jail. As soon as I got back there, I started laughing, so David hugged me and told Ethan I was crying. This got Ethan believing that he really was going to jail.

David closed the door to Ethan's room, and grabbed Ethan's fake handcuffs. He went outside, waited five minutes, then came stomping up the front steps. He knocked on the door really hard and the dog, being the "tough" guy that he is, went CRAZY. I heard Ethan start getting upset in his room. David came in side and said in a super deep voice, "Yeah, I'm here to take Ethan to jail." David asked the "officer" if he really needed to take Ethan to jail. The "officer" said that he did because he stole a bike. The "officer" also noticed that Ethat didn't poopy scoop like he was supposed to the day before. David asked the "officer" if he could handcuff Ethan and bring him to the car. The "officer" handed over the handcuffs. David went into Ethan's room and told him the cops were here to take him to jail. He handcuffed him, and brought him to the front door. He had Ethan tell us a tearful goodbye. The he opened the door to hand him off to...No one. Ethan looked around and said, "I am NEVER touching anyone's stuff EVER again."

Lesson learned.