Sinking Ships

Sometimes it is hard to be a Mom. Sometimes? What am I saying! Most of the time it is hard to be a Mom and have all the answers and know just what to do in all situations and truth be told most of the time I am just flyin' by the seat of my pants and makin' things up as I go. Things get increasingly harder as the kids get older and their problems get bigger and the responsibility of their character development weighs heavily on me. We have been having a reoccurring problem with valuing things and personal responsibility so here's what I did this time......

The kids each received a gift card for one of our favorite stores from the chase crew of a balloon that landed near our house during the Balloon Fiesta. They were told to put them somewhere safe and during fall break we would go and use those gift cards. Nate was leaving for his hunting trip after work so the kids and I decided to go and meet him for lunch and then go to the store to spend the cards. As we were loading up the car there was a major meltdown because Ethan vehemently accused his sister of taking a chair and getting his card off of his bookshelf and thus loosing it. The two little one's are always the accused in any type of "who done it" scenario no matter if they did or not, they are just the easiest to blame everything on and it gets old. The screaming persisted all the way to the office and I decided that sometimes you just have to sink the whole ship! Now no one was going to go to the store until the card was found and I threatening to stop allowance as well because every week there is someone that has misplaced it and I am tired of it. I decided on this for 2 reasons. 1- if doing something for yourself isn't enough motivation, maybe having everyone else count on you is motivation. 2- family unity - they can learn to look out for each other and help each other out. The 2 older ones of course didn't think this was fair and they just kept getting my reply about sinking ships.

Here's where the story gets funny and it lets me know that I'm in for some serious challenges ahead with this whole parenting thing. We are driving home and Ethan has an epiphany as to where the missing card was and, sure enough, when we got home it was in this place and he had to apologize to everyone. When Nate got home we recounted the story to him and Jared had his own little epiphany. When the kids were lamenting how everyone had to suffer on the sinking ship because of their brother, Jared says to me with his finger pointing in the air, "yea, but Mom, doesn't it say in the 2nd article of faith "We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam's (Ethan's) transgressions?" Oh snap! Good point my little grasshopper, however, that was referring to the plan of salvation and our ability to make it back to our Father in Heaven. Man, this kid is a smart one and he makes me laugh with his "all knowing" attitude and boldness. He definitely keeps me on my toes, that's for sure. We all had a good laugh and the kids ended up going to the store a couple of days later. So, sometimes you get punished for what you did and sometimes you get punished because someone does something to sink the whole ship --when to decided to apply these is the true art of parenting and what makes it so challenging.