An Expensive Lesson

Ace has come to a certain age where he does not like to listen to us all the time and wants to do things his own way.

The other day, we were in the library and he wanted to borrow books. I asked him not to borrow so many.. but he wouldn't listen. With my half half rule, it meant he had to borrow more books to read so many english books.

Then I asked him to borrow using my card as i had a reminder service attached to my account but for some reason, he prefered to borrow using his own card ... I guess it was an exertion of his independence...

But as it was a small thing I told him ok but please remember your due date yourself...

Fast forward to today... and I asked him when are his books due.. he said he did not know.. when I logged in to his account, I realized that his books were due about a week ago! 

So because he borrowed MANY books and because it has been so long, he now has to pay a fine of almost $10...

When he found out, Ace cried and cried and cried and cried.. cried so hard like his father and mother died already....

"Alamak, pay fine, pay fine lah.. just learn your lesson and dun do it again, dun need to cry so had lah.." I told him...

And he continued to cry and told me, "But I wasted so much money.. $10 is a large sum of money to me!" (It is actually his one week "income")

And as he continued to cry.. he counted out $10 worth of notes and coins and passed them to me...

"Already told you mah.. use my card.. you dun listen.. now cry also no use..."


Anyway Max says orhbeegood.. this will be a good lesson for him... I think it is an EXPENSIVE lesson.. hahaha...

I shared with Ace later tat I once had to pay a huge fine for library books and that is how I learnt my lesson and why I now subscribe to a reminder service cos I know i am bad in remembering.. and I make sure once I am reminded I will make plans to return the books. So just take it as a lesson lah.

Ace declared though that he is never going to borrow books from the library again. I told him that is plain silly lah.. buying books more ex right:) hahahaha...

I have been attending a Conscious Parenting workshop recently and we learnt that when our children are feeling down, one way to help them is to join them in their emotion and support them to finish feeling the feeling...

Instead of joining him, I let him cry lah.. and then I try to jiang dao li with him and remind him it is better to use my card next time or set up a reminder for his library account as well if he wants to use his card to borrow books..

Then much later afterward then I realized I missed out the chance to practice wat I learnt! But i did feel a little better that I did bond with him and JOIN him by spending some time with him before bedtime.

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