Little Lies and Cookie Crumbs

When you are the parent of a young child, there is a lot of fibbing, fudging and falsifying. They are not very good of course, and its usually pretty obvious.

Sure, its wrong… but sometimes you are secretly delighted by their bad behavior…’My sneaky little sweetheart!’

I wrote this essay after just such an event.

Last night I found cookie crumbs in the bathtub.

There are 4 people living in the house. My husband, myself, our 3 year old son, and our 5 year old daughter. I knew it wasn’t my husband or myself, which left only 2 options.

Though I love him dearly, I’m not sure my 3 year old son has figured out how to be as stealthy as to steal a cookie then hide in the bathtub and eat it so no one would know. So that left only 1 person.

‘ It wasn’t me! It wasn’t! Why don’t you believe me?!’ After 5 minutes of declaring her innocence, followed by my assurances that no immediate repercussions would result from telling the truth…my daughter folded. ‘Ok.I did it’… Yeah. I figured that out.

As we were scootering home from school the next day, my daughter pulls a snail out of her pocket. Not a garden snail, but a really nice one, with a beautiful shell.

‘Where did you get that?’ I ask. ‘ I don’t want to tell you! (her face squishes up) …You’re not gonna like it (scrunched up face of torment)… You promise I’m not gonna get in trouble?…I don’t wanna tell you! (breaks into tears)’.

After 5 minutes of coaxing, she quietly admitted that it was Clyde’s pet snail. She took it from school. He was supposed to be in the jar with his 7 brothers and sisters. ‘Why?! Why do I keep doing this?!’ she wailed.

We of course turned around and started walking back to school, with my daughter horrified the whole way. ‘I just want to go home!  I don’t want to go in…’

We walked up the steps inside the front doors. ‘I don’t have to go all the way in do I!’ Trying to keep my dignity as my daughter wrapped herself in my skirt, which was quickly revealing parts I didn’t want revealed, we walked into her classroom and straight to her teacher. As teachers do, she reassured Ella that the important part was that she ‘did the right thing’ and brought him back.

Though she was clearly upset by the whole event (she let out mournful sobs every couple of feet as we scootered slowly home), I was rather pleased.

This, I recognized, was a major moment. Though I had tried at various times to explain ‘right from wrong’ there was never any impactful response….’Oh….Sorry….’ was about as much as I had gotten thus far, which of course drove me insane… ‘Is she listening to me? Does she even GET what I’m saying?!’

But here was concrete proof that she GOT it! She was feeling remorseful, and even ashamed of her deceit. I couldn’t have been more proud!

I understood why she took the snail. She’s 5 and she thought it was cool and wanted to keep it. But now, she was seeing exactly why you don’t just do whatever you want to.

This feeling was not worth it.

We made our way home, my whimpering 5-year-old, my oblivious 3-year-old, and my oft-neglected dog. The sun felt warm, and my heart felt especially full.

I would try to be nurturing yet firm when we talked about it at home, all the while trying to contain the bubbling up inside of me at the beauty of such a seemingly average, yet exceptionally profound moment, in the life of a mom.