Have you ever noticed that most of the stories that you read to children have some kind of a moral? Well.. why not recall that moral in the heat of the moment? We made some x-mas cut out cookies (aside: I am sure you know, but we learned the hard way that those are cookies you must take off the sheet immediately).
Over time, our inventory was shrinking. I had to address this situation. Of course, there are options. I could yell at her. I could take away all cookies for the rest of the week, or I could bring up one of those stories. Thankfully, we had just that book. Raggedy Ann and the Cookie Snatcher talks about themes of stealing and honesty. So I tried it.
"Peterkins... are you stealing my cookies?"
I did not anticipate the answer that came. "No. I didn't eat all the cookies." Of course. Literal-ist. Understanding every part of the story and her small window to escape. Peterkins, the dog in the story ate all of Raggedy Ann's cookies. B just ate a few cookies. Surely she wasn't Peterkins.
Either way, it was a great opportunity to talk about the sneaking in a fun, creative way that required memory skills, creativity and social skills. We still addressed the situation, she understood what the problem was but we didn't have to argue or yell.
Peterkins got a cake for his honesty in the story. Ms. B just didn't get sent to her room without dinner. But I guarantee that we both felt better about the exchange than we would have had we started yelling.
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