Jessi's Lie

So yesterday I instructed Ari to clean the elder girls' room because I wanted to clean everything up so we could begin decorating for the holidays. She later brought me a piece of folded paper and said, "looks like Jessi has been passing notes." I glanced at the paper and put it aside to be addressed later. When Jess came home, I asked her, "have you been passing notes during class?" To which she replied with an emphatic "no." I asked her twice more with the same result. Then I got the note, hid it behind my back and told her that I would give her one last chance to tell me the truth, because I already knew what her answer was supposed to be. She then said that she was allowed to talk to people before class.

I finally pulled the note from behind me and read it more carefully myself. I told her I could recognize her handwriting (which I could) for one of the parts. There was an insult to the teachers choice of professional attire written by another person. Jess and I went back and forth a few times and finally I told her that I would repeat back what she was telling me and she could say whether it made any sense to her. She said they were allowed to talk before class until the bell rang. She said that her friend was sitting all the way across the room. She said that the note was not passed via several people, that her friend brought it over to her, yet they weren't supposed to be walking around the room willy nilly before class. So I then asked her if she would believe it if that was told to her.

I told her that I flat out did not believe her when she said she was not passing notes during the class. I told her that if she were caught doing it there was a chance she could receive in-school suspension (detention) and that the insult written would likely hurt her teacher's feelings, that the teacher is a person too, and if the insult was found in Jessi's hands, that it could color the teacher's opinion of Jessi. I told her that she was old enough and mature enough to make the right decision herself, that I would not police her in any way, and that I would not make her tell her friends to stop passing the notes. However, if she were to be caught and receive detention for doing it, that her punishment for it would be severe.

She reached the age that she needs to start choosing the right path for herself. She needs to make her own decisions. I can only hope that I've raised her to choose the mature and responsible way. If not then she will be choosing to accept the consequences of her actions. After all, for every action, there will be a reaction. Perhaps not always immediate, but it will come.