Monday, January 25, 2010

Setting An Example

About a year ago, Sonya learned what it meant to do something by accident. Since then, when she does do something on accident, she makes sure I know it right way. By that I mean, if she spills or drops something, and it was truly on accident, she will more or less scream it at me.

"It was an accident, I SWEAR!" She'll yell, before I get too angry.

Sometimes, when she does something to one of her sisters without meaning to, she'll claim accident. The good thing is, she does tell the truth. She will not claim accident if she did something on purpose. Instead she just won't talk, or start her explanation with a long "uuuummmmm.....".

Since Lana hears Sonya yell ACCIDENT! to get out of getting in trouble sometimes, she realizes this is a good defense. Lana, however, does not understand the meaning of the word and will do something, obviously on purpose, but then tell you it was, "assiden". This morning was one of those times. The best part about it... she unknowingly passed the word along.

She and Georgia were eating breakfast together. It was near the end of whatever they were planning on eating for the meal. For Georgia that means playing with oatmeal leftover in her bowl. Lana doesn't usually play with, or throw food anymore, but this morning she decided, for whatever reason, to do both. With soggy Wheaties. Yum. She was taking what was left in her bowl and throwing it. This left me with milky, wheaty grossness all over the floor near her chair. When I saw what she was doing, I scolded her, got her down from her chair and handed her a paper towel to clean the mess she had made. As she went to clean it up she said to me,

"It was assiden, mom."

I decided to try and explain to her as best I could that, "No Lana that was not an accident. An accident is something that happens when you don't mean for it to. You did this on purpose because you meant to and wanted to. Do you understand?"

She said yes, but who knows if she got it or not. After she cleaned up the mess, and I cleaned her up, she ran off to her room to play. I turned toward Georgia, who at the time was pounding her sippy cup in her cold bowl of oatmeal, making everything there quite gross. I went to take away her tray and her fun time and muttered something to her about it being yucky. Then she looked up at me and said,
"Akiden, mom."

"What did you say?" I wasn't sure I had heard her right, so she repeated it for me.

"Akiden, mom," she said again.

"Accident?" I asked making sure I was getting the word right. She nodded her head at me.

"No, that was not an accident," I started to tell her. Then I realized if I wasn't sure Lana got my explanation, there was no way GG would, so I let it go.

Meanwhile, in the back of my head I could hear my mom's voice from when I was a kid. When I would get in trouble for something, the topper was always how I was the oldest, which meant I needed to set a good example for my sisters, so don't do bad things or they would follow suit.

Damn, she was NOT kidding about that.

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