Telling The Truth

I know I shouldn't read the news, there is nothing but horrible things in it. Nannies snapping and killing kids, people being murdered, puppies being left for dead in trash cans and now with the elections there is slander and mayhem and people being rude and... ya know, I don't even wanna get started on that route.

But this caught my eye today. A title for a blog by another mom, "Kid Suspended for Bringing Gun to School Would Have Been Better Off Hiding It". I read that, and then read the original article.

And it got me thinking.

This is why children don't tell us the truth. This is why for a lot of children it is easier to lie and pretend it didn't happen, because the punishment for telling the truth is too much. Schools have policies, yadda yadda, but this was not a case of the gun being brought to hurt someone or even just to show off, it was the case of an 8 year old being 8 YEARS OLD and forgetting where he put something.

If this boy had hidden the gun and it hadn't been seen, no harm done really. But if he had hidden it and someone saw it, he could have faced even worse punishment. But from how it looks to me, he noticed something that was wrong, he knew it was wrong and he tried to do the right thing. He is now being punished for doing the right thing.

I know that as a mom I will try to make the punishment fit the crime, and that when Liam tries to do the right thing he is rewarded for that. If that little boy was my son, I would make that 10 day suspension a vacation and give him a reward. We could go shoot that BB gun at some tin cans in an empty field, go out for ice cream, get a new toy that ISN'T a gun that he could take to school, and then I would get him a second BB gun to keep at grandpa's house so he never had to transport the gun again and not have the same thing happen again.

I hope my little boy grows up and is the kind of boy who will tell the truth no matter what, and I hope that he will never be afraid to tell me the truth. And when he is old enough and responsible enough, we'll get a BB gun and teach him how to be safe with a gun and that if he ever sees one where it isn't supposed to be, he tells an adult right away just like this little boy did.