Lately, dishonesty has been a big issue here in my home. We've had kids sneaking around, getting into craft supplies and food items and using/eating them up without telling us. Now, I don't restrict these items too much, but I do require that they ask beforehand so that I can at least keep tabs on what we've got available. Its a practical thing here, we are on a budget and I carefully plan meals and activities for the family. If something is eaten and I'm not told, then I cannot adapt my menu accordingly. Same with a craft or activity, if someone takes off with the glitter glue and uses it up without telling me they are using it then I may plan a craft using it and then not have something for them to do during that craft time because I'm missing supplies. This is just basic common sense I think, yet the girls are having difficulty with remembering this one rule that we have.
It is very rare that I will say no to something, and that is usually because what they want is either out of our normal budget (requiring us to save up for it or specially budget for just enough with no extra, like certain fresh fruits that may be out of season) or it is not an item they need to eat (seriously, who sits and eats a stick of butter or a package of cream cheese or a boxed cake mix? yuck!). I don't think I'm being unrealistic here, just ask so that I know what you are taking and I can see what's left when you are done. I do 95% of my discipline for breaking this one rule, and usually in conjunction with lying about it afterward. The other 5% of discipline is for unkind words and actions, so obviously I'm doing something right if I'm not frequently breaking up fist fights or correcting unkind words.
So back to the taking things without asking first and dishonesty afterward issue. I am trying to come up with a series of good natural consequences for not asking before they help themselves, and for a series of consequences for when they try to cover it up with lying. The current offense involves Liddy and a craft kit that I had purchased. It is just a simple sun catcher painting kit, it has 12 sun catchers that the girls paint and then they can hang up. I bought this a long time ago and hid it on a shelf, then promptly forgot about it until Scott found it on Sunday while he cleaned up those shelves. I've had it at least a year and a half I think. Anyway, I had this great idea for it. Since we don't have any ornaments for the tree (every year we buy the shatterproof bulbs, and every year the kids manage to break every single one) this year we are doing homemade ornaments. I thought, in a moment of brilliance, that maybe the girls would like to spend a Saturday with daddy in the kitchen with its wood laminate floor (read: EASY TO CLEAN UP MESSES) painting sun catchers while I am out grocery shopping and running errands this upcoming weekend. He agreed that it sounded like something he could manage on his own, and that it would be a great way to distract the girls while I leave to go shopping (there's always a fit from at least one kid because she thinks she must go EVERYWHERE with me and she never lets me out of her sight, we are working on this and she's starting to get better about it though). Well, apparently Liddy decided that she didn't have to wait, so yesterday she snuck into our room, got it out, and started painting one of the sun catchers. She spilled all the purple paint on her pants and managed to get the teddy bear one she was working on half finished before she heard us and hustled to put the stuff back in the box, not in the spot Scott put it, and ran to hide the sun catcher under her bed. I discovered the damaged kit this morning when I went to get the box of Christmas cards out to mail off another one to a person who had sent us one. She first lied about it, and then when I threatened to put the tree up and no Christmas at all she came clean and then went to get the one she had painted and the pants she had spilled paint on to give to me.
Natural consequence for her actions? Well, since the timing coincides with payday weekend, I can go purchase some paint to replace what she spilled (which I need to buy all colors anyway as those kits don't come with enough paint, nor enough brushes for more than one kid). So her sisters still get to do the craft without much issue. However, I'm debating if she should be allowed to participate in the activity with her sisters because she decided that she did not need to wait and went sneaking off to do it herself. I am giving her an opportunity to show us that she has some self control to earn the ability to do the activity this weekend. So far, she's not very receptive to this, as it requires her to actually DO her chores instead of whining until one of her sisters does them for her to shut her up. She is actually quite intelligent and a good planner when it comes to getting out of doing her chores, I'm rather impressed by it at times (but mostly I'm annoyed and she ends up in trouble for it, giving me most of the 5% of discipline that isn't for not asking before they take stuff and lying about it). We have solved many of our past discipline issues through similar natural consequences methods, including the girls' regularly having a chronic case of disrespect and the gimme's whenever I took them shopping (that stopped after I picked up the little two and my purse and walked straight out of the store with the oldest 2 hanging off me and all 4 screaming bloody murder because I left without buying the treat they were going to get that trip, then followed it up with a few months of not taking them out at all except to doctor appointments and other REQUIRED things with no field trips or shopping trips at all), so I would like to implement a natural consequence method for this case. I had a child recently eat half a stick of butter (go ahead and gag, I can wait) and as a result, I ran out of butter and had to make their macaroni and cheese without it one day. The only thing that makes cheapo store-brand generic mac and cheese taste tolerable is the butter in it, so their lunch that day was NOT something they enjoyed and they ate just enough to not starve until dinner that night. We are slowly making progress on the food-eating aspect of this, but still have a long way to go.
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