Two hours after J went to school today, only then did I realize she forgot her lunch box. It was packed nicely and the only thing she forgot to do was to put it in her school bag.
Later, K realized her sister’s snack when I was biting into it for breakfast.
He asked, “Hey, that’s sisters’s snack! Why are you eating it?”
“So what should I do instead?” I tested him.
“Send it over to sis.”
I replied, “No. I am not going to do that.”
“Why?” K asked curiously.
Then I went on to explain to him and later J after she got back from school why I didn’t send the lunch box over to her.
They might have thought that I was trying to be mean. But on the contrary, I was trying to teach them a lesson… hmm… in fact, two.
Lesson #1: I want them to be personally responsible for their own belongings. If I were to send over the lunch box whenever they forgot to bring, I would have sent a message to them that it’s okay to leave out the lunch box since my daddy will send it over to me anyway. They will not take extra effort to make sure that the lunch box (or other stuff for that matter) will be in their bag. By making J face the consequences of forgetting her lunch box, she would be more careful next time with her lunch box.
Lesson #2: In a time of “adversity,” think of solutions. It might not be as serious as you think but being left without food (and later I found out from J that she didn’t have money too), she was forced to come up with solutions to overcome this little “problem” of having nothing to eat during recess. She has to find a way out of this. I want her to know that life is not always smooth sailing and whenever she is faced with a problem, find a solution. As it turned out, J borrowed money from a friend (since she didn’t bring money coincidentally) and bought some food for herself to solve this little “mess” that she encountered today.
Not bad huh?
One of the parenting principles that I uphold dearly is never overly pamper your child – which is reflected nicely in this story.
Of course, there are more principles than this. All others can be found in my book “The Nonconformist’s Guide to Parenting.”
More details about the book can be found at:
