Toilet Paper and Honesty

Toilet paper is wonderful stuff. Wonderful, that is, until it is all over the house.

A few weeks ago, our favorite William decided to pull a bunch of sections of toilet paper off the roll and set them on the counter in a nice, neat pile. I was glad it was not all over the place and decided it could still be used since it was in such an orderly pile. Someone else had other ideas in mind. Guess who?

S-I-D. Yes, Sid. He decided it would be great to spread the nice, neat pile of toilet paper all over the bathroom. It had a certain flair to it especially since it was so carefully placed over the shower rod, the door handles, the bathtub faucet, and even over the squirt bottle and the scented warmer we have in there. We could all tell just by the manner of the spreading that it was Sid who had done it. The problem was getting him to admit to it.

I asked Savannah, Sid and Austin individually if they had done this and they all said "no." The younger two children were locked in their bedroom when it happened, so the three older kids and I sat in the hallway outside the bathroom door until one of them decided to stop lying to their mother. It was rough. Finally, we called Daddy and told him what was going on. That didn't help.

I decided to get to the core of the real problem and explained that I no longer cared whether the bathroom was a mess and that we were ALL going to help clean it up, but that the bigger problem was the dishonesty. We talked about how lying makes you feel bad and makes the spirit leave and how that was something that needed to be fixed so we could all feel better and help everyone be happy again. Sid finally admitted his guilt and apologized to all of us. We cleaned the mess in about one minute and all was well.

It's amazing how we can find moments full of things like toilet paper to teach a small lesson about big things like being honest. Hopefully the lesson sticks and we're glad the toilet paper didn't.