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The Lesson of the Broken Bird

I'm now the proud owner of this broken bird.

Yep, my child pulled it off a shelf at a store that just opened this week. It fell on the ground and instantly broke. While we could've just shoved it back on the shelf and walked away like many people do, we knew that wasn't the example we wanted to set for our children.

So we took the bird up to the counter and told the cashier we would like to buy it. She seemed confused at first, but we explained what happened and she rang it up. We paid for it and went on our way.

When we got home, we went straight for this child's piggy bank and removed the money that it cost us for this bird. There was more confusion from our child (because we have never had to do something like this before) about why we were "taking" money away. So, I sat down and explained that we did not plan on purchasing this bird and especially did not plan on purchasing one that was broken. And since we had to buy a broken bird we did not plan to, we were taking that money out of the piggy bank to pay for it.

And now we have a new punishment when things like this happen. Because I know they will happen again in the future because that is how kids are (yes all kids will do this at some point...it's life).

It's hard for my child's mind to process right now, but I know that it will help us tremendously in the future when it comes to taking responsibility for their actions and also taking pride in things they own.

So now I get to display this bird which matches nothing in my house and has a huge chunk missing out of it after super gluing it back together.

Yes, I could trash it, but I don't think that helps this situation at all. I feel that having this item and being able to use it as an example for future situations is going to be great.

I mean the next time a toy is broken by another child, I can remind my child of the time they broke an item in a store and what they had to do because of that action. And I think that we may have less instances of this situation in the future because our child will remember this punishment, which he absolutely hates.

And as much as I hate this situation and hate seeing my child upset or confused, I am kind of glad for this situation today as well.

It is making me rethink the way I handle other situations with my child. Yes, not all of these situations can be handled by taking money out of a piggy bank, but this is at least a start of teaching my child to be a responsible person.

And now I will go enjoy the peace and quiet that is nap time until my child wakes up and we go back to our normal lives. (And sorry for the crazy formatting of the text of this post; I've tried to fix it a million times and it's not working...)

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