Theivery!!!

This week, on Wednesday morning, Max had a little Fall Festival at his preschool. They were allowed to dress up if they wanted to, costumes and Halloween aren't really my thing so Max didn't dress up and honestly I'm pretty sure he would not have known why he was dressed up so it was no big deal. Since Wednesday is the end of our going to school week I'm tired when we get home and generally don't get into Max's backpack until Thursday morning. This Thursday morning Max was going through the contents of his backpack as I was watching. He began to pull out something blue and red and as I watched him his face grew very somber. I realized it was a spider man costume and asked him where he got it. He said it was Samuel's, I asked why he had it, he replied "because I want it". I took the costume from him, explained he couldn't take other people's stuff, and sent an email to the teacher to ask if she knew why Max would have Samuel's costume, if a worker had made a mistake or if Max had taken it...well, of course I still haven't heard back from her. I struggle with knowing what is going through Max's mind, obviously, although he understands his world and is certainly fluent in English, there are things that are still difficult for him like past, present and future. He struggles with amounts, possession, emotions, etc. thus explaining why he has something from school proved to be difficult. Is he saying he wants it now that he has it? Could it be he wanted it and took it? Was it something Samuel said he would share with Max? (Doubtful on that one!) I was at a loss, but as I continued to query Max on the costume it became more and more clear that he had the costume because he wanted it. As he took his favorite jacket out of the backpack he told Allison "Samuel cannot have my jacket". It seemed to me that he thought Samuel might take his jacket because Max took his costume. So again, I told Max it was wrong to take other people's belongings.

As a consequence Max was not allowed to watch TV, namely Barney, for the remainer of the day or the next. I generally see myself more of natural and logical consequence parent, but there was no real logical consequence. He couldn't play with the costume, but he wouldn't have been to play with it if he hadn't stolen it either. I couldn't let Samuel steal something from Max, I'm not even really sure who this Samuel is and with the lack of response from the teacher I can't even email and apologize for my son's egregious behavior. So no Barney it was. I explained no Barney "today or tomorrow". He asked one time later that day and I reminded him he was being punished, he nodded and didn't ask again. I'm not really sure if he understood the time frame or if he decided to wait for Barney until it was offered. Either way he had no Barney and he knew it was for having the costume. Now if the teacher decides to email me and tell me they gave it to Max I'll have to figure out a way to apologize...I'm sure that will be easy to make clear. It was a hard decision but in the end we believe discipline it too important to put off on the chance he didn't steal it. At the very least it needs to be very clear to him that he shouldn't have other people's stuff.

Jill and I were talking about it today and she thought it might be left over behavior from the orphanage. I think she might be right. I'm sure that if Tankhun saw something in the orphanage he wanted he just took it and probably things that belonged to him were taken, I know they were because nearly everything we sent him was gone by the time we got there...the general opinion is that the workers take the kid's stuff...great example!

So today I explained to Max that on Monday the costume would be returned to Samuel and asked him what he would say to Samuel, his response? "thank you". My response *sigh* "No Max you will say sorry." Max ~ "Ooooh, sorry, okay". He's a sweet boy (with some impulse control issues!) and he's a sinner as every human before him but maybe he has learned a little lesson about stealing, maybe not. I think we'll be monitoring the backpack closely from now on!