My 5-year old son killed a baby chick and hid it under a bowl. When my wife came home she found it and was furious- yelling and screaming and wanting to know who had killed it. Of course none of the children wanted to admit it because they feared getting beaten.
A few hours later my young son came to find me and said, “Pa, there is something I want to tell you but please don’t tell Ma.” I knew what he was going to say but I just waited and said, “What is it?” “I killed the chick. I was just playing with it and I don’t know why but it just died. Please don’t tell.”
In the past I would have punished him by hitting him or bringing him right to his mother for punishment but that time, I thanked him for telling the truth and told him that he wouldn’t be beaten and that I’d need to tell his mom but would wait until later when I was sure she would be less angry and I would also tell her how sad he was and how fearful he was to tell her the truth.
“In the future,” I asked, “will you play roughly with a baby chick?” “No,” he replied. And when I asked why and he said because he didn’t want his mother to hit him, I said to him, “No, let the reason for not playing too roughly be that you have to be gentler, not that you may get in trouble for doing something wrong.”
The Baby Chick
-Male church pastor, C2
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