sneakity sneak

2 stories.  i must tell one for you to understand the other, though they may seem unrelated at first.

A few months ago, we were having lots of problems with Annabelle and Julian at bedtime.  No matter how much we threatened, begged, took away/rewarded, etc. we could not keep Julian in his bed. 

We felt like Annabelle had something to do with it, but she insisted that she was just trying to sleep and Julian was getting up on his own.

So, my brilliant husband took his little tape recorder and slid it under their beds as he was tucking them in one evening.  Within minutes, Julian was up, asking for some water.  Dustin walked him back to bed and played the tape for Julian and Bella.   Annabelle listened for a second before she realized what was happening, and her eyes grew wide.

"What are you doing?" she asked, a little panic in her voice.

A minute into the tape, Annabelle's little voice was heard whispering, "Juju...get up and go ask Daddy for some water or soy milk or something."

Annabelle knew she had been busted.  Dustin had a long talk with her and fortunately, we've had little problems since.
***

We've recently been having some issues with Annabelle being sneaky and then lying about her sneakiness. 

She recently sneaked some of my gum at naptime. 
The gum fell into her hair and rather than wake me up and ask for help getting it out, she rummaged through my desk for scissors and cut her hair off. 

I didn't know anything about it until I went into the kids bathroom to put some towels away and saw a large pile of hair, hiding behind the toilet.

I then noticed quickly that Annabelle had a few sections of hair missing from the left side of her head.

She lied about it quickly.

"Maybe it just fell out."
"Maybe Juju cut it out."
"That's not my hair on the floor." 

Finally, she confessed to the gum and the cutting, the whole bit.

Several other small things happened, all during the daytime when Dustin is not home. But one night, she had another incident when Dustin happened to be "on duty".

The kids each got a small handful of candy after they had gotten haircuts at the mall earlier that day.  Julian was saving his for the car ride to Arkansas.  He ate a few pieces and then put the remaining candy on the kitchen counter.  Annabelle's hair cut was much earlier in the day, so her candy was eaten earlier. 

As Dustin was brushing the kids teeth and getting them a final glass of water before bedtime, he noticed that all but 3 tiny pieces of candy were missing from the counter.  He asked me if I moved the candy or ate some of it.  He asked Annabelle and Julian if one of them had been eating the candy.  We all denied it.

After a few more questions, he finally declared that Annabelle and Julian would both receive the same discipline for sneaking the candy and not telling the truth about it.  Annabelle finally confessed (after about 20 minutes of questioning) that she might have eaten Julian's candy.

Dustin and Annabelle settled onto the couch for a LONG talk about sneakiness and truthfulness and all that we've been going over for a couple of weeks now.  They talked about appropriate punishments and consequences of lying and sneaking, and how it hurts everybody.  How it could have hurt Julian, even when he was innocent.

Dustin said, "Annabelle, the thing that I don't like, is that Mama and I don't know when you are telling us the truth and when you are just making up stories so that you don't get into trouble."

Annabelle very calmly and innocently, looked Dustin in the eyes and said, "Well Daddy, why don't you just check your tape recorder to see if I'm telling the truth or not."

She's a smart cookie. 

Comments

[Leane]

I love your kids. They are so adorable. And i like how the tape recorder worked. I taught first grade this year--and I will say--that whole lying/sneaking thing definitely is something they all kind of go through. She will learn from this though. I had a girl cut her own hair in class--one day and she just swore it wasn't her hair..yet it matched HERS lol and no one else sitting near her had that color hair. These are definitely the "testing" years..You and Dustin do a great job with your kids, I can tell from the things you write.

[Lawana]

This explains why when she kept pleading for gum each morning before i left for work and i told her "no- mama said no gum at all this week" that she replied back "tata, I'm not being sneaky about it...:)