Wednesday, October 08, 2008

"Mom, I have a lot of guilt."

That's what Marcus told me yesterday.
I bet you will never, ever, in a million years guess where his great burden of guilt came from.

Did he perhaps cut my apron strings?

Or maybe he broke into my hidden stash of dark chocolates and devoured them. (impossible, because that crime had already been committed by me.)

No. What he really did was to break into Esther's webkinz account and steal her really good stuff and sell everything else. He completely wiped out two of her rooms.

How do you deal with a child thief in cyber form? He is grounded from his own account. He has to play on her account until he earns her enough money to re-furnish both those rooms, and he has to send back the rare item he stole, plus an additional one.

I feel kind of bad for the guy. He committed his first crime and was so burdened by the guilt of it that he confessed before anyone even knew there was a problem. But, saying "I'm sorry" does not make restitution, and even though it seems like a silly thing to us adults, those little webkinz worlds are quite important to our children.

So, anyway. In case I was ever wondering if Marcus had an active conscience (and I was, I had a foster sister with Reactive Attachment Disorder) I need no longer to fret.
At dinner, he asked to pray.
"Dear God. Please heal my body (he is sick)
But most of all, I think I need you to heal my heart.
Amen"

3 comments:

Renee Morgan said...

I <3 Marcus.

You might want to change Essie's password.

Anonymous said...

Becka; Such a neat lesson for a child to learn without much harm done. To be able to see that your child understands right from wrong, and then to confess his transgression with out being coaxed by anyone other than the Holy Spirit is such a wonderful thing. You didn't mention if you made him give back what his webkin robbed from his sister's, and whether or not he had to restore it 10 times over again.

Val in the Rose Garden said...

I consider that a self correcting problem. Self correcting problems are nearly as hard for the parents as the ones that you have to search out and punish for. I have a really hard time bouncing between wanting to really punish them for the hurt they have caused and feeling like telling them it is all ok because they are already punishing themselves SO sereverly.

Sweet little guy. We have had a few of those in this house. I don't think I handled it as well as you. You are an amazing mama.

Val