I’ve shared before how C. is an impulsive child prone to get herself into trouble when something shiny grabs her attention and pushes all reasonable thought from her brain. Here is the story of her latest impulsive moment.
We were entertaining friends a few weeks back and C. was teamed up with one of her seven-year-old buddies. The parents were in one room and the kids scattered about the house. Littered through the kitchen were several hours’ worth of empty cans and bottles and the tops that had originally been on them. C. and her buddy decided they wanted to gather up all the bottle caps and keep them as a “collection”. They told us of their plan, we said fine, and they disappeared while we went back to our conversations.
A while later I walked through the kitchen and noticed the recycle can had an awful lot of water bottles in it. "Have we really drank that much water?" I asked myself. I made a mental note to investigate later but got back to more important matters like taking our guests fresh drinks.
Soon C. and her pal came joined us, carrying a ziplock bag that was loaded with bottle caps. Way more than we had produced that evening, even with guests. Time to investigate.
Sure enough, something shiny had caught C.’s attention. The girls had gotten into a new case of bottled water, taken 20 or so to the kitchen sink, emptied them, recycled the bottles, and then added the caps to their bag. Which, you know, made perfect sense to them because we did give them permission to collect bottle caps. Why not save themselves the wait of several days while we drank through nearly a case of water and just cut out the middlemen?
When we confronted them about their decision, they gave us looks like we were absolutely insane for not understanding their logic and being upset with them. Which I guess is about right for seven-year-olds. It sure feels like we should be beyond this, though.
Our neighbors often tell their kids to be sure they’re making good choices. This was a not a good choice night for C. and her buddy.
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