Violation

Reference the earlier post, about the rules of our house. For what it's worth, the kids should also know, as they raise their future families, that writing rules has been much easier than getting kids to follow the rules.

Yesterday, James (age 10) shared a story at dinner. We had been discussing, at some length, how the kids don't feel that they have enough time at school to eat their snacks or lunch. The end result is that their hunger eventually catches up to them, like last night when I couldn't find enough in the house to keep them fed. Maggie, our slow eater, particularly feels the pain of this problem, but apparently the hunger, and the injustice, bothers James, too. He wanted us to understand that every kid at school  struggles with hsaving enough time to eat their food. James piped up to tell us, with some excited animation in his voice and face, "I found a bag of chips in the trash that hadn't even been opened!"

"Hmm..." I offered, noncommittally, picturing a single-serve package of chips. "Seems a shame to pitch those instead of bring them home for another day."

James went on to describe it in more loving detail. "Yeah, it was Pringles. In the bathroom trash. It hadn't even been opened!"

A horrid thought began to take shape in my mind. "James - please tell me you didn't take it out of the trash and eat it?"

He blushed and looked down. "No, I didn't eat it. ... I saved it for another day," he murmured. Then he tried to backpedal. "But it was right on top! It was really just in the recycling bin for paper towel.And there weren't even any eaten."

Now the picture got one step worse in my mind. "James, was this a store package, or a ziploc bag with some Pringles put in it?" Yes, you can probably guess the answer, as I unhappily did. So, it wasn't even a hermetically sealed bag of chips in the trash recycling bin which my son was planning to eat.

It begins to occur to me that some lessons are never learned and some can be learned too well. James apparently has learned frugality, and "waste not, want not." He has learned that Mom rarely buys chips, so you sometimes have to make your own fortune in life. Yet, he apparently never quite internalized the basic Rule #2 of the household ("No playing in the trash").

As a parent, I have decided that sometimes pragmatism is at odds with a good principled position. I may need to let the kids take chips for snack once in a while, just so they don't feel a level of privation that drives them to dumpster diving.