Teaching life lessons

Bradley has started lying with a straight face… but luckily, I can still catch him out.  But it’s driving me a little batty, I just want him to stop!

Today was a perfect example of that, and of me stretching the truth a little to prove a point to him.

There’s a Spar supermarket down the road from our house, and we went there this evening to get bread and milk and to collect our pizza takeout that we’d ordered.  Now that supermarket gives the kids lollipops as they walk out… which they’ve come to expect now… and tonight Connor asked the shop owner where his sucker was.  LOL!

Anyhoo, by the time we got to the car, both lollipops were being consumed, and I noticed an orange wrapper on the ground next to the car.  Whe we got in the car Bradley mentioned that his lollipop was orange.

So I asked him if he was the one who had littered, explaining that I’d seen the wrapper.  He looks straight into my eyes and says “No, it’s in my pocket”.   So I just told him that I wanted to see the wrapper when we got home.  He sat there for a while, and then finally told me the truth.

I decided that this was a good time, not only to discuss the lying issue, but also the littering one… which he’s also doing more and more these days.

So I told him what he must do if he had paper or rubbish he wanted to get rid of, and explained why it was important to throw it away properly.

I told him 2 stories about what will happen to that wrapper.

If no-one picks it up and it rains, the wrapper will float into the drains.  The drains lead to the rivers.  A fish will swallow the wrapper and die.  So now he’s a little wide-eyed.

Then I said, the more likely result is the following.  The wrapper is shiny. Birds will picks the wrapper up in their beaks and use it to line their nests.  However, the baby birds like the look of it and start pecking at it.  They swallow a piece of it, and they die.

Then Connor pipes up “Poor birdies” from the back of the car.

By now Bradley is a distressed, promises not to do it again, and pleads to me not to tell Daddy (he knows he’ll be stripped of TV priviledges for a while).

Hope it worked!