Teenie Tidbits

As mentioned in previous post, my boy #2 wears glasses.  His prescription is mild and he only needs to wear them at school for distance.  Yesterday when he came home from school,  I asked the usual questions.  How was your day?  Do you have homework?  What was exciting at school?

Then, just out of curiosity, I asked, “did you wear your glasses today?”  Without skipping a beat, my boy answered NOPE.  He seemed very unaffected by the whole conversation and very matter-of-fact explained that he lost his glasses.  About a week ago.  He said it like he lost a pencil…no shame in his voice. 

I asked if he asked his teacher.  He did.  She has not seen them.  I asked if he checked the lost and found.  Nope.  At this point, I am starting to lose my cool a little due to the fact that I am unemployed and I am still making payments on his glasses and cannot afford to replace them at the present moment.  My boy was casually washing a pear at the sink and I shut off the water and told him to get his shoes on.

We were going to take a little walk back to school.  It was then that my boy started to cry.  He could tell I was angry.  The whole walk to school I gave him the lecture about how expensive the glasses were, how he needed to be more responsible for his things.  I told him that he should not have waited a week to tell me that his glasses were missing and that maybe we would have had better luck finding them if we knew sooner.  His response?  “I think someone stole them!”

When we got to the school, we went into the office and I made the boy do all of the talking.  He quietly told the two office secretaries that he lost his glasses last week and wondered if anyone turned them in.  Sure enough,  someone had turned in a pair of glasses that were left in the computer lab at one of the computer stations.  They handed them over and we made the positive ID.  I sent the boy to his class room to put the glasses in his case.  We then walked home with me telling him the entire way that he is so lucky someone turned them in.  You see, we have a new “allowance” plan in place at our house and here is how it works:

Each kid starts the month out with a set amount of allowance.  Then, for each “infraction” (bed not made in the morning, dirty clothes laying on the floor, video games not cleaned up and put away) we will deduct .50 from the allowance.  I keep a notebook with the deductions.  At the end of the month, they will be paid the remainder of what is left.  I explained to the boy that if the glasses were lost never to be found, his deduction would be so big, that for the next year he would owe ME money at the end of the month!  Hopefully my point was made and the boy will start to take a little more responsibility for his things.  I am not holding my breath, but it is a nice thought!