A Cheatable Moment

I know of NO parent that enjoys punishing their child. So to say that I hate doing it, I think, is valid. Tonight, I had to make a tough decision about punishing the Pie, and I hope I didn't overreact. 

After a nice evening of sharing dinner and watching TV, I mentioned to the Pie that I needed to go through her school binder. She casually stated that she had a paper I needed to sign. That's nothing new. But when I looked at the paper, my heart dropped as my eyes slowly read the words
ACADEMIC DISHONESTY. 

I was speechless. I stood at the kitchen counter, staring at the paper, while the Pie sat across from me, sobbing in earnest. I reacted with a shocked gasp, then began asking questions. What were you thinking? Why did you cheat? Where did you get this idea? Every question I posed was met with "I don't know" as a response, which simply made me angrier every time I heard it. The Pie knows that I do not accept "I don't know" as an answer for anything other than "Do you know..." inquiries.  When I reminded her of that rule, she responded with more sobbing. 

I took a moment to breathe and get my bearings and decided to attempt a different approach. 

"Please tell me how this happened," I said calmly. She stumbled over how to begin the story (as I sometimes do myself) but eventually explained that during the spelling test, she wasn't sure how to spell the word, so she sly slipped her study sheet out of her binder and copied the word.  Her desk neighbor saw the infraction and quickly told the teacher about it. The Pie was allowed to finish the test, but her paper was confiscated and remains ungraded. 

I know all the educators and child development experts would consider this a teachable moment, but I was too heartbroken to teach her anything but how upset I was. She knows that it's wrong to cheat, so I asked about her motivation. "Where did this idea come from?"

"Junie B. Jones," she said. "I'm reading the Cheater Pants book and Junie B. Jones cheated on a test in school because she didn't study." Some role model SHE is! When I asked her what happened to Junie in the book, she admitted she hadn't gotten that far yet. I decided that what would happen to the Pie would be vastly different that what happened to the little Jones brat. 

Earlier in the evening, I agreed to enroll her in gymnastics this month since she has been begging me for weeks. I was about to do the online registration when all this came to light, so THAT little project was immediately nixed. She is grounded from playing with friends for the rest of the week and each night she has to write sentences. One hundred times, I will not cheat in school. Finally, and probably the worst for her, she must apologize to her teacher for her actions.  

I know in my heart that the Pie is a good kid. I wonder if she just was unable at the time to discern that her action was wrong. She gave me no indication that she had gotten in trouble at school until I saw the paper. Was I not paying enough attention? Did I miss something? I still want to know WHY she felt compelled to cheat?

Am I putting too much pressure on her to get good grades? Am I pushing her too much? Maybe I think that school for her should be just as easy as it was for me. During our conversation, I stressed that it was much more important to me that she do HER best, not THE best. I would rather she make a lesser grade on her own than make a perfect grade by cheating. 

Perhaps this situation was a teachable moment, after all. I'm fairly certain that when faced with a similar choice in the future, I hope she looks back on this time and remembers how she felt, how I felt and what she lost as a result:  a tiny little bit of my trust.