Child Fire Safety and Lying

When I was a little child my parents taught my sister and I how to use matches to light fires. My parents philosophy was that we wouldn't be curious and use matches without permission because we already knew how. My mother had read news articles about how little kids hid in their bedrooms lighting matches and caught houses on fire. Her strategy worked and I always liked it.

Fast forward to my own children. I was determined to teach them how to safely use fire for its intended purposes. My son has always showed the most interest and would have great visits to his grandpa Wesley's house who does tree trimming. They would have great big bonfires and he learned how to do all that as little as he could pick up logs.

This year on the 4th of July since he is ten he was allowed to help light some of the little fireworks and it was all fun. Our neighbour whose children were away even let him light some of his fireworks since he was lonely. I thought all was going good until my eldest smelled smoke in her brother's room. She immediately came and told us. He tried to say that the smell was just from some bottle rockets that he had kept after they had been lit and the smell was still on them. There was no way this was the truth the smell was too strong.

Eventually the truth came out that he had taken our new box of matches and was lighting them since he liked the smell and was putting them into a lemon juice bottle after he blew them out. Yay at least he had done it safely but I'm glad his sister had alerted us before something tragic happened.

We were so sad that he had lied to us. He used to be the child that prided himself on always telling the truth. He was so remorseful and cried to the point of hyperventilating.  His dad had him give us anything fire related in his room and he said he had. He then cried and cried and seemed to totally freak out. I had him practice deep breathing with me to try to calm him down. He always seems to be so much harder on himself than anyone else is. He just kept freaking out until he reached into his toy box and pulled out the box of matches that his sister had told us he had. At this point he started crying that he was going to die. Since me hugging him wasn't calming him down enough his dad had him stand in the corner and told him to count to 1000 by the time he got to about 150 he was calm enough to talk to us about it.

We explained again to him what the issues are if you play with fire. Today I showed him videos on fire safety and what could happen. He wrote 150 word essay on lying and fire safety and he is grounded from fire related things for a month.

It was quite a bit unnerving to see him freak out so much over being found out. I didn't know if he was really that upset or if he was just trying to get out of trouble. I guess I'm suspicious because I remember being a little girl and crying really hard whenever I accidentally broke one of my mom's china in the hopes that she wouldn't be angry at me. I pray so much for my kids that they will grow up to be good people.