Forgiveness

A little thing about our house-even when Leah gets in trouble and has to do a timeout or have a toy taken away because she's not listening, we always talk about forgiveness. I tell her that I forgive her when she says she's sorry even if she still going to get punished. For instance if she's throwing one of her toys I'll take it away from her and she'll scream and cry and say she sorry and I will tell her that I forgive her but I'm still taking the toy away because she wasn't listening. We're trying to teach her that saying sorry is good and we will always forgive her but it doesn't erase the consequence of what she did.

So today, she was playing some games on my phone but then she started messing around with other things and I'm always telling her not to do that because she's deleted stuff before. So I took the phone away. She cried and was all upset but got over it quick and started playing with her toys- everything seemed fine.

A little while later I'm in the bedroom folding clothes and she walks in quietly, sits down and says "mommy, I sad just cause I not be a good listener that's why I sad." So we hugged and I said "Oh honey I'm so sorry that you're sad but you weren't a good listener so I took it away but I forgive you!" And she replied "I just sad cause you took it away. I don't forgive you cause you taked it away".

So we talked about THAT for a little bit and then she said she forgave me and everything was fine. But she came at me like an adult with something really on her mind that she wanted to discuss. She was really sad but also really calm. She just wanted to tell me that she was sad because I took the phone away and that she did not forgive me for doing it.

But what I do really like is that after she got over the crying and was playing nicely she was obviously still thinking about the situation and something about it made her feel like what I did wasn't right so she came to talk to me. I really love that she felt confident enough to do that. I guess she was never one to bottle up her feelings, that's for sure! (It helps that she is so darn sweet! Whenever she brings you something, lets say a pretend cup of tea, she will say "here is some tea mommy, I know how much you love tea!")