And she's only six...

I was drinking a cup of coffee this morning and watching the news when Ethan walked in and quietly told me that Emily had just told him that she just tricked me. I told him to just go in and tell Emily to come see me. He walks in Emily's room and says, "Hey Emily, Mommy wants to see you." Her reply was, "Why? Is she gonna spank me?"

Up until this moment, I didn't even know how I was tricked. I couldn't even think of anything bad that had happened this morning. So Emily slowly peeked her head around the corner of the room and said, "What do you want?" I told her to come in and see me. I told her that I heard her tell her brother that she thought I was going to spank her and I wondered why she would think that and if she did something that deserved a spanking. She just looked at me for a minute trying to figure out the correct response. She said, "Yes." I asked her what she did, and she just told me that she didn't want to tell me. After explaining to her that she would get in worse trouble for NOT telling me, she finally did tell me. She said, "I lied to you when I got a cereal straw."

You see, not long before all of this happened, Emily came into my room and told me that she got sidetracked earlier and never got her cereal straw and asked if she could get it now. I said that she could and she ran off. I never gave it a thought. Apparently, that was a whole made up story because she did get one then and was lying to me about getting sidetracked.

So, when I asked her why she lied to me and why she thought it was okay, she said, "I wanted a second cereal straw." "Why did you think it was okay to lie, Emily, when you know that lying is wrong?" "Because I thought it was funny."

Well, that answer was NOT the answer I wanted and just about summed up her punishment. Had she shown some remorse for the lying, then I probably would have just told her not to let it happen again and that would have been it, but the girl needs to learn to come up with some better answers than that. I calmly explained to her that it's a shame that she lied because I would have allowed her to have the second cereal straw if she had just asked for it, and since she lied and thought it was okay to do it, she would be spending some time this morning sitting on her bed thinking about what she did.

And I should probably add that the child earned her some extra time added on because she lied again to me to try to get off of her bed by telling me how bad she needed to go to the bathroom. I looked at her and told her that she could get up and go, but that she better hope that she really does need to go. She just gave me this deer in the headlights look and then went into the bathroom. She sat there for a while, then looked at me and said, "How much more time will I have to sit on my bed?" Oh, this girl is making me go gray...