R-E-S-P-E-C-T

(Does everyone have Aretha Franklin in your head now? Good!)

On Saturday, Heath and I discovered that some boards (10 of them, to be exact) had been knocked down from our wooden fence in the backyard. However, none of them were lying in our yard, which is where you would expect them to be if someone kicked them in. Instead, they were all piled together in a stack behind our neighbor's house. Our neighbors have two "energetic" children and the other day, I politely asked them to stop jumping and trying to climb our fence (which would shake greatly every time they took a running leap onto it!). Suffice it to say, that request went ignored.

After our discovery, Heath went over to speak with their mother. Apparently, she knew they were playing on our swingset earlier in the day (when we were not home) but was unaware of the damage they caused. Later, she sent over her boyfriend and brother-in-law to speak with Heath. They told us they would fix it the next day after they purchased some lumber.

Two days have passed and NOTHING has been done. I guess I never really expected them to do anything about it, but it is the whole attitude surrounding the issue that bothers me. As a child, I NEVER had such a complete lack of respect for others' property. Granted, I was a more mild-mannered girl, but still...I could not even imagine kicking in parts of someone's fence and causing such damage. Further still, I cannot imagine trying to hide the evidence! (As if you could not see the gaping holes in our fence).

In my home (even with the dysfunctional chaos), that would have been a 2-week grounding EASILY. Something like that does not go ignored. It is NOT okay to damage other's property and it is NOT okay to be apathetic about it. The sad thing is, I don't know that there will be any sort of discipline or consequences for those kids. Don't get me wrong, it's not as if I want to see them punished. But what are you teaching your child by: 1) NOT following up such unacceptable behavior with any sort of consequence? and 2) NOT following through on your end of the bargain to FIX what they have broken in the first place?

I am not one to tell someone else how to parent (unless of course, they ASK for that advice ;) ), but in my opinion, you are shouting volumes to them about how we should behave in life by how you react (or DON'T react) to a situation like that. In the above instance, with no sort of apology from the children themselves or follow-up to fixing our broken fence, you are teaching them the following:

1) It is okay to disrespect others and their property.
What parents may say: "Hey, kids will be kids and your fence was too old to support their weight in the first place."

2) You don't have to be held accountable for your actions.
"You were just having fun right? Besides, their fence was old and rotting in some places anyway."

3) You don't need to apologize for your inappropriate actions.
"It wasn't your fault anyway." (Find an excuse, see above if you are stuck.)

4) What you tell people doesn't matter because you don't have to keep your word in the first place.
"Something came up on Sunday and we couldn't fix the fence. It's not like we had a written agreement."

Respect. Honesty. Sincerity. Remorse. Guilt. Accountability.

Are these really such horrible things to teach your children??? Isn't there something to be said for good old traditional values? Discipline does not have to equal punishment and consequences do not have to be physical, but it is our job as parents to instill values and morals (gasp!) into our children. If we don't, the world will. Just take a look around at our current state of affairs...it's not hard to see the damage, even if it isn't evident in the neighborhood fences.

Side note: As a follow-up to Heath's homeschooling post, our incident is the perfect example of "socialization" we do NOT want our kids to have and reason #4658 that we are choosing to homeschool.