Mom's Corner—The Bookworm Bandit

We have tried hard to encourage a love of reading in our children.

Our 16-year-old daughter, ever the lover of the , sets a goal for herself every year to read 100 books and might hit it this year. Our middle son, age 14, has developed an interest in science fiction. But the 7-year-old, like any elementary schooler, is especially excited by the school’s book fair.

“PLEASE can I have money for the book fair?” he wailed. “PLEEEEEEAAAAAZZZZZZZZE?” 

Now, of course we do send him to school with money for the book fair, because again, encouraging a love of reading in our kids remains important to us. The book fair was running all week and his class was scheduled to go on Thursday. He asked us for the money on Monday. 

We didn’t give him the money on Monday, knowing that his day to shop was Thursday, and he’s seven—and will probably lose the money by then. We thought we were clear in explaining this.

Tuesday, we got a call from our son’s teacher. Apparently, fearing that he would not be given any money by Thursday, he took matters into his own hands. He ripped a check out of his father’s check book, took it to school, and tried to buy books at the book fair with it. 

“Pay to the order of Fifteen dolers,” it said, and it was signed with his first name, all in pencil and in 7-year-old handwriting.

He was counseled by the people at school that what he’d done was more dangerous and more wrong than he’d understood. We wondered whether our son would be honest with us about this. A few other times this year, when we’ve been called by the teacher, he came home later acting as though nothing was wrong, only to be upset that we somehow already knew about his difficulties. In this case, I decided to test his honesty.

I said, “Hi sweetie, how was your day?”

“It was great!” he said.

“Did anything strange happen?”

“No. It was a good day.”

“Really? Nothing happened that your teacher would want me to know about? Something you might be forgetting to tell me about anything that might have happened at school today?”

“No, mom. I had a great day!”

BUSTED! 

When I explained that we’d gotten a call from the teacher, his head went back like a PEZ-dispenser, and out came the big watermelon-seed tears. It was unclear whether he genuinely felt ashamed about what he’d done or whether he was upset that the jig was up.

We deal with some strange situations as parents, but each of us has one or two pet peeves that can’t be easily forgiven or negotiated. Mine is honesty. I was so worried about modeling honesty for these kids that I never taught them to believe in Santa Claus. 

If the episode with the book fair and the check cracked me up, his lying about it did the opposite. Contrary to anything Jack Nicholson has ever yelled, I can handle anything, as long as it’s the truth. The fact that my son chose to lie about his experiences hurt. He is now serving a two-week punishment at home (one week for the checks and one week for the lie), but he did still get money to go to the book fair.

I can bewail this stuff, or realize it’s through these aggravating cases that he learns and becomes a better kid, but we learn, too, and become better parents.

While we should make kids accountable for their behavior, it’s also healthy to look at our own roles in the situation and think about what we could have done differently, and what we’ve learned going forward. 

What I learned from this episode was:

• Do a better job of communicating and clarifying what the plan is, so that there’s no misunderstanding on his part. Had he been clearer about the fact that we were waiting to give him money, he would not have tried to “solve” the problem.
• Help our son understand that we, and his teacher, are in regular communication and are on the same team, and that this is a partnership designed to help and support him rather than just to discipline him.
• Hide the freekin’ checkbook.