Look mom I drew a picture for you

My daughter comes running in the house, “Mom I made a picture of you, you have to come and see it!” I walk out the front door and Bella is telling me she found a rock that is like chalk, you can draw with it. She says, “I made a picture of you on the van.” I walk around the front of my Grand Slam Minivan to find my precious daughter had scratched a picture she claims is me, a flower, and something else into the driver side door of our van.  

My first reaction is to flip out like, “What the Hell were you thinking?”  But at that very moment I also realized something that made me pull back any anger and frustration I had with her. When we lived in Spokane our car was parked under our carport my daughter was never allowed to play around our vehicles. She found a rock drew on the ground with it and discovered that it marked on the concrete. She thought she’d make a pretty picture for me on the side of that van that I get in on. We had never taught our daughter or instructed her to not draw on the cars or that rocks can scratch, I couldn’t be mad at her for literally scratching the shit out of our car when we had never taught her any different.  

There are some things out there that we just don’t teach our kids, we throw them out the door and expect them to know the difference between right and wrong. Sorry but at 5 my daughter didn’t know that what she was doing was wrong. It’s easy for us to get frustrated and angry with our kids but are we really angry at them or are we angry with ourselves? Next time your son/daughter does something that just about pushes you over the edge ask yourself who are you mad at and did your child actually know that what they were doing was wrong?

Now I can say had I done this when I was a kid I would have had my ass handed to me. My mom would have whipped her flip flop off and wham bam fired my ass up. But I’m not my mom and I handled my situation exactly how I seen it. My daughter didn’t know any better, I sat her down and explained that what she did scratched our car, the picture she drew will not come off our car ever, and that she is never to take a rock or chalk or anything for that matter and draw on someone’s car.  Playing around the car, in the car, or near the car is unacceptable; she is to stay away from cars, ours and our neighbors.  That she understood. Has she done anything like this again? Nope.  Will she do anything like this again? I don’t think so. You can ask her if she is allowed to play around the cars and she’ll tell you NO, she’ll also tell you not to draw pictures on your car too.

Most people wouldn’t have handled this like I did and hey that’s ok too. I did it my way, probably way different than even her dad would have handled it, but how I approached her and explained to her that what she did was wrong, she understood. I felt like she understood and actually learned that what she did was wrong more so than what a spanking would have taught her.