Lessons Learned

On Wednesday I received a phone message from Jacob's bus driver. She said there was an incident on the bus the day before that she felt like I should know about. She told me that Jacob had thrown a nice white sweater out of the bus window. She was really nice about it, but wondered how we should deal with it because he needed to have some sort of consequence (I totally agree!)

I was really angry when I first heard the message. Luckily, when Jacob got home from school, I had calmed down a bit. I sat him down and asked him to tell me what happened and to his credit, he told me the truth right away (which is something we've been working on). So, he was grounded for the rest of the afternoon.

When Jermie got home, we discussed it and decided to call the bus driver back to see if the sweater was ever recovered. It turns out that it wasn't, so we told Jacob he needed to replace the sweater. He was very sad when he realized that his entire piggy bank would be needed to make retribution.

It took almost the entire evening, but Jermie sat patiently with him and explained that the bad feeling inside of him wouldn't go away until he made things right. Finally Jacob put the money in a bag (on his own) and wrote the following letter.

We asked him if he felt better inside and he said that he did. Jermie then talked to him about Repentance and read him some scriptures about repentance and forgiveness. The next day, he gave the money to the bus driver (to give to the girl who lost her sweater- She's a bus aide in the afternoon, so she wasn't on the bus when it happened). As part of his punishment, he also had to sit by himself at the front of the bus for two days.

Although difficult, this was a wonderful learning opportunity for Jacob. I talked to his bus driver the next day and she said both she and her bus aide cried when they read the letter and got his bag of coins because it was so sweet. Through all of this, I was really grateful for Jermie. He handled it beautifully. He never was angry or impatient and really taught Jacob why what he did was wrong and how to make it better. Hopefully this is a lesson he'll take throughout his life.