All The Marbles

We've been having to give Nathan lessons on stealing and lying recently. He took a couple of marbles from Party City (supposedly they were found loose somewhere). Nathan asked me to hold his marbles while he got into his car seat. "Where did you get these?" I asked. "They were just in a box in the store," he replied. "Son, that's called 'stealing' when we take things without permission or without paying for them. You have to take them back." I brought him back inside to return them and apologize to the clerk. "Daddy, can we just put them back where I got them?" Nope. I wanted him to hand them to the young man and apologize for taking them. He did a good job and seemed embarrassed enough that I felt he understood the lesson. Within an hour, at Walmart, we had an opportunity for review of said lesson, as he placed a wind-up flashlight in our basket while Laura and I were loading the purchased and bagged groceries. (It makes me wonder how many of those checkout area items go home with people who don't return them.) I had told him he could not get one of these flashlights on this trip, but he slipped it into the basket in hopes we'd bring it home and let him have it. I saw it a few short feet past the checkout. "Nathan, how did this flashlight get into our buggy?!" He lied, "Evan put it in there." In addition to our anti-theft policy, Nathan is learning is that lying always hurts (especially his bottom) more than telling the truth!