Image via OTA Photos Flickr
I’ll admit it. I can be an angry parent.
I have been known to lose my cool when silly things happen with my boys. Fooling around that leads to dented walls or not looking after bike helmets and water bottles at day camp will certainly lead to an altercation where my voice gets raised. Simple, common sense errors that children are prone to, send me off.
But this weekend I experienced a different anger. A heartbreaking anger. One that had me seething in silence. It was all at once devastating, disappointing, and shattering.
My son lied. My son stole from me and lied. He’s 8.
He had gone in my jar of loose change in my home office and taken about $15 in coins (in Canada we have $1 and $2 coins so it was about 9 coins he had taken).
We were on a camping weekend, a special trip where just he and I had hit the woods to spend some one-on-one time. We were watching a movie in our tent and I heard a jingle in his suitcase. He showed me the coins and said he had found them in the dirt in the campground earlier that afternoon.
The lie was swift and instant. There was no pause. It was almost like it was premeditated.
