Proper Penmanship Followup

Since most of the responses were of concern about controlling my temper, I wanted to follow up on the rest of the day.

Joel ended up spending a good deal of time wiping up the ink. It didn't come off without baking soda, so we let him get pretty frustrated with it not coming up before we agreed to help. I was pretty mad about the marks, but I recognized that the table's just "stuff". Wiping up ink for a while seemed an appropriate consequence. Plus, the time it took to do that gave us plenty of time to talk to him about our primary concern that he know that we have zero tolerance for lying.

We had a big discussion about lying and how important trust is to us. It seemed too early to discuss the concept, but last night he brought it up. He said he wanted to earn trust with us and wanted to know how. It was a prime opportunity to do a better job of explaining it, and so it went.

I seem to underestimate Joel consistently. I think concepts are too advanced for him and then he surprises me with an understanding of them. Over and over, I simplify things and find it was unnecessary. Two steps forward, one step back, for me. It's a parenting thing every parent has to go through, I guess.

Anyway, after a little more investigation, it seems likely that both boys were guilty vandals. So, Joel might not have been lying as much as I thought. There's another parenting lesson for me.