Parenting 101: A Punishment Dilemma

The past two years have been quite a lesson on parenting. We have been trying, through much trial and error, to figure out ways in dealing with so many different situations that it is exhausting. However, we have learned many things and have improved in many ways with God’s help. Just recently, a rather unique and comical situation arose in which some learned skills were put into practice.

One lovely morning our neighbor, Dora, stopped me as I passed her house. She wanted to show me something in her backyard…a very unusual request. Now please understand, my fellow Americans, that a typical “backyard” in our community is nothing like suburbia. We are talking about a very tiny plot of land “enclosed” (much too generous of a word) with entirely rotten pieces of wood, extremely rusted pieces of metal, and other miscellaneous items. At Dora’s, the one good fence is, well, ours. The “storage shed” is actually an outhouse with a drainage ditch going out to the front, joining the rest of the sewage along the road. The large leaves from the trees overhead (which have been known to house snakes) fall and rot on the ground year-round. Dora, in particular, is one to not clean up the leaves in her backyard, thus all is a thick blanket of rotting leaves all over, mixed with trash, scraps of random things, and other things that belong in a junkyard—appearing to have no use whatsoever. This environment is habitat to many snakes, rats, iguanas, etc.

As Dora and I stepped carefully through the “backyard”, a most unpleasant sight awaited us. There in her backyard were a couple items that belonged to one of our girls. I will attempt to be somewhat discreet and say that these two items were the same, very female-related and rhyme with “pluddy thunderwear”. Conveniently located on the other side of the good section of fence is a spot where some of our girls wash their clothes. Apparently, much to my horror and rage, somebody didn’t want to wash a couple things and decided to chuck them over the fence…and gross out our neighbor. I thanked Dora for showing me and promised to return soon.

At the house, I found all the girls eating breakfast. Conveniently locating myself directly across from my main suspect, one of our newer girls, I shared my findings—and not so discreetly—with everyone. I mentioned my surprise at such an act from one of our girls and wondered aloud who it could possibly be—all the while staring at “her” for the majority of my speech. All sat wide-eyed and shocked while she sat smiling sheepishly. Having my subtle confession, I took her over to Dora’s house.

En route, she tried to make up excuses and I calmly informed her that I didn’t care to hear them at all. The “items” were there and she had to make it right. Anything else was not worth listening to.

I will try to briefly recount the comical conversation with Dora and the girl:

By the “items” in question, I ask Dora to explain how she found them. From there,

Me: Dora, how does that make you feel to see something like this in your yard?
Dora: It makes me feel bad, señorita..
[girl tearing up in guilt]
Me: It would make me feel bad, too, if someone used my yard as a trash can. You know, this is a problem all of us women face. What advice do you have for our young lady to learn to be able to wash this type of thing?
[We converse about washing techniques because we can’t just throw away everything we stain. That then leads to some scary stories from Dora about washing at the river during “that time” and having chameleons and snakes and eels and other creatures notice and scare her to death; once one tried to climb in her boat. All stories that I would never imagine as a sheltered gringo with machines or at least sinks to wash clothes in. We all bonded in our story hour.]
Me: (to anonymous girl) Do you have anything you would like to say to our good neighbor, Dora?
Girl: I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. Please forgive me.
Me: Thank you so much. Now that you have apologized with words, how can you apologize in actions?
Girl: (looking at me wide-eyed) An extra job???
Me: What a great idea! So, after breakfast you can come back with several big black trash bags and clean Dora’s yard for her! Thank you so much! What a wonderful way to apologize and help our neighbor at the same time!
Dora: Gracias, señorita!

I had a hard time keeping a straight face the whole time. Cleaning that disgusting backyard was the perfect punishment, and it was “her idea”. Ha! She ended up doing a great job and has never done anything like that since. She cleaned for a long, long time. She and Dora are now friends, too.

Seriously, though, it was also a great opportunity to show an example of loving discipline to one of our neighbors in the community. The norm here would be to yell at them, tell them they are stupid and disgusting and then hit them…and probably never get around to making them do anything about it in the end. The experience brought out a lot of good…and made me laugh.