Do you know how many times we’ve had the same discussion with our daughter? It goes something like this, “If we can’t trust you in our own home in small things, then we won’t be able to trust you to go places and do bigger things.” Then we go over the bigger things. “Do you realize that legally you’re old enough to baby sit, however you never follow the rules when we’re gone so we can’t leave you in charge or home alone?” “In just less than three years you will be old enough to drive, but if you can’t follow the rules at home, then we can’t trust that you’ll follow them on the road either.” To this one she actually had the nerve to say, “What difference does it make, I’ll be alone in my car?” So we had to have the discussion about hundreds of other drivers on the road that would be depending on her to follow the rules of the road.

Although we homeschool our children, we had actually sent her back to public school about four years ago so she could get services. She qualified for weekly speech and occupational therapy as well as two hours of daily special classes for the learning disabled. The first year she was back at public school we thought everything was going quite well. Once she even said, “Can you believe how smart I’ve gotten since I’ve returned to public school.”

Then the calls and notes from the school began and that’s how we found out that our daughter had a real problem with stealing. First, the teacher called to say she had forged my signature on a permission slip. The teacher was clued in by the handwritten note that said, “She ain’t got no allergies.” A week later the teacher called to say our daughter had taken a project that the class had been working on for a month from the library and presented it to the class as her own. She got away with it until the teacher heard whispers at the back of the class and investigated. She realized our daughter hadn’t even attempted to do the project. Then a note came from the cafeteria. Our daughter owed twenty dollars for charged food. I couldn’t understand this because she packed her lunch everyday and ate breakfast at home everyday, after all I was a stay at home mom. When I called the school to investigate I found out that she had charged and then made periodic payments exceeding a hundred dollars over this school year and apparently had done the same last year.

At first she came up with a really creative story of how she had drawn pictures and sold them at school for ten cents each to earn all the money. She actually maintained that story for a couple of hours before she caved in. She had been taking the cash out of my purse and I never knew it. Oh, there were times when I thought I had more money than I did, but who would suspect on of their own children? That was her last day at public school.


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