Natural Consequences

You gotta love when natural consequences happen that completely TEACH lessons better than you could ever come close to trying to teach!

Here's what happened:

Noah plays with the only little boy on our street. "L" is 2 years older than he is and is into much more mischief than I have grown used to with Noah. We've been allowing them to play, but it has been monitored very closely over the winter and it is going pretty good (in comparison to last summer). I 'trust' (and I use that word lightly when I am talking about 2 BOYS) them to play together - but just have to keep gently reminding the both of them about what IS expected.

Now that some of the snow is melted and it was nice weather this week, they have been playing outside a lot and this has been a great treat! They have also started riding their bikes up to the school's parking lot. This parking lot is "across the road" from our house but is separated by 2 sports fields (a soccer field & baseball diamond). NOW, this is a little out of my comfort zone but Jacques assures me that Noah is old enough to go this far. Considering I have proven to be a little over bearing with Noah, I am working on this and have been allowing him to go.

Yesterday, Noah came in the door yelling "MOM, I NEED A BAND-AID". As usual, I did not jump because usually any "teeny-tiny-insy-weensy" scratch requires a BAND-AID in his world! But this time was different, when I saw his finger I realized that there was blood (slightly) dripping off of a couple of his fingers yet he was rather calm (considering the amount of blood). When he explained what happened, the conversation went like this:

N: "L" found an empty beer bottle in the parking lot and he was throwing it trying to break it. I told him not to do that because we would get in trouble. But then I thought it looked cool, so I threw it too and I cut my finger on the bottle.
M: Oh, honey are you okay? We have to go wash it off.
N: No, Mom it's going to hurt.
M: Well, Noah if you don't wash it off and there is glass in there it could get infected and get much worse.
N: Are you mad at me?
M: No.
N: But I thought you would be mad at me for throwing beer bottles.
M: No Noah, Mommy is very proud of you for telling me the truth and I am so glad you are okay.
N: "L" told me NOT to tell you the truth because he thought we'd get in WAY too much trouble. I told him NO WAY, I HAVE to tell my Mom the truth because if my Mom finds out I lied then I'll be in WAY MORE trouble. Are you sure you're not mad at me?
M: Honey, I am sure. I am just SO proud of you for telling me the truth and I am so happy that you are okay because it could have been MUCH worse. But tell me something, are you going to throw beer bottles to try and break them again?
N: NO WAY.
M: That's exactly what I wanted to hear.

So as you see, these 'natural consequences' are the BEST lessons! His finger is okay - nothing more than a little scratch that happened to bleed a lot.

Now, today when "L" came to play - I had a good little chat with the 2 of them about TELLING THE TRUTH. Hopefully, this will continue!