[lit-ideas] Re: kids, morality, ethics, and obedience

  • From: John McCreery <mccreery@xxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2005 00:02:18 +0900

Julie,

That's a wonderful story and one great kid.

John McCreery

On 2005/03/03, at 23:48, JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx wrote:

> We are in the process of re-doing Elena, my 11  year old's, bedroom; 
> new
> paint, furniture, etc.  We are getting a new  bed for her on Sunday.  
> For the
> record, Elena is a smurf-child, 70 pounds,  4' 8".  Skinny tiny but 
> strong and
> head-strong.  She has a classmate  who is fairly impoverished.  This 
> girl lives
> in a shanty-type trailer;  space heaters that don't work (her mother 
> turns on
> the cooking oven and opens  the door to heat the place), broken out 
> windows, no
> furniture in the bare small  living room except a tiny bookshelf with 
> a 15"
> TV, the live on raman noodles and  I don't think they ever eat 
> meat....  I've
> been over there when I've  retrieved the child to play with Elena.  
> The kiddo
> is smart and  good-hearted.  She's been sleeping on an air mattress, 
> with a
> couple  blankets I gave them that we were no longer using.  Elena 
> wants to give
> her  current bed to the child when she gets her new one, which I 
> consented to.
>  Last evening I was absolutely prostrate with this flu thing and Elena 
> asked
> if  we could take the child her bed that moment.  I pointed out that 
> a) I
> couldn't really move, and b) that would leave nowhere for her to 
> sleep.   She
> pleaded, begged, stomped, and I said no, it just will have to wait 
> until  Sunday.
>  I dozed.  When I woke I found (and it is highly unusual for  Elena to 
> ever
> be directly disobedient) that Elena had single-handedly  disassembled 
> her twin
> bed, taken the frame, the foot and head boards, and pulled  the two
> mattresses, and her sheets into the front hall, had called her  friend 
> who was on her
> way over with another friend who had a pick-up so she  could put it up 
> and sleep
> on it last night.  I stood there and said, "What  in the world have you
> done???"  (total astonishment)  She looked up at  me and without any
> mischievousness, simply sincerely, and without guile, said  "I've done 
> a good thing.".  She
> was firm in her confidence.   After the bed was taken, I asked Elena 
> why it
> was so important to her to  do it that night in spite of my telling 
> her no and
> her having no help.  She  said her friend's air mattress had gotten a 
> leak and
> all her friend had to sleep  on that night was a bare carpet and the 
> floor was
> very cold.  Elena said,  "I can sleep on my floor with a sleeping bag 
> because
> I have a space heater and  my room's warm.  But she doesn't have a 
> heater."
> The Other List  had a thread on parenting I haven't read carefully 
> enough
> yet.  I have  raised Elena fairly freely (my Mother keeps insisting I 
> should have
> spanked her  when she was little <g>); but her own little nature seems 
> to be
> keeping  her in good stead.  As long as she doesn't give up her own 
> place to
> sleep  to someone else at her own peril <sigh>...
>
> Julie Krueger
>
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