Chase. Adorably cute. 3 1/2 years old. A true boy. Mischievious. Lives life to the fullest. Wants to be his own boss. Can find trouble almost anywhere. Can be stubborn. Can also be so sweet. I completely love him...even though he can challenge that love at times!
For example....
Last week the neighbor comes over to kindly inform us that Chase was driving his hot wheels cars on the hood of his....BMW!!! (of course, he would just have to pick the classiest car out there to use as his driving track!) There were 6 or 7 obvious scratches, in a nice round race track formation! The neighbor was nice, but Benjy, being the good man he is took responsibility for our son and offered to pay him out. Little did we expect we'd be shelling out $100 bucks for the damages (sand and re-paint job)!!!
So....Chase received the well-deserved spanking from his Dad...took the long walk to the neighbors to 'fess up and apologize....and is now doing "odd jobs" to earn money to pay to the neighbor (obviously not $100 - he is only 3....but we are thinking $5 - $10 to teach him a lesson....thus far he has earned....$1.50....and IF he is doing what he is supposed to be doing right now, that amount will grow little by little)!
It was a moment I will never forget because of the look on his little face....I sat down to talk to him about his consequences. I referred back to a "Timmy bedtime story" I had told the boys a while back. Timmy had kicked a soccer ball over the fence and it broke the window. Being the responsible boy he is, Timmy owned up and paid for it.
So I asked Chase if he remembered what Timmy did when he broke the window with the ball. Chase - quickly and humbly replied (as if he knew where I was headed...) "Timmy paid to fix the window"
Me - "Right. And so who do you think should pay for this man's red car?"
Chase - "Daddy?"
Me - "wrong answer"
Chase - a little more hesitantly "Mommy?"
me - "wrong again" (but trying to not smile)
Chase - with a sigh "Chase"...... and then with a voice of despair and very sad eyes "but, but I don't know how to pay for cars!!"
me - giving him a hug but firmly reassuring him "oh, sweetheart, you are going to learn. Believe me, I will teach you how"
2 comments:
Awww... life is hard when you're three. And you just want a shiny surface to race your cars on.
So sweet. You did such a good job re-capping what happened. Poor guy, but lucky for him, he has good parents and hopefully he'll be learning those lessons early on so he won't have to learn so many when he's older and they're more expensive to pay for! :)
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