Parenting Fail?

Our neighbor across the street has an empty lot next to his house. He has graciously constructed a neighborhood garden of sorts and began growing his crop earlier this spring. The girls frequent the lot, playing soccer, spies, and attempting to climb the apple and plum trees that call the lot home.

My dear neighbor posted this on facebook, "Thanks to who ever decided to pull out my pumkin plant and break the other one. I was trying to grow some for holloween."

Spelling errors aside, I immediately asked my lovely girls if they were touching Mr. David's pumpkin plants to which Claire firmly denied. I breathed a sigh of relief, tucked them into bed and posted my response on facebook, "not your little friends here either., but it may have been me, sabotaging the contest ;)"

Flash forward to morning. Chris comes in the bathroom to share the news. He interrogated the girls at breakfast and they confessed. I could feel my skin crawl with embarrassment, disappointment and sadness. I was horrified. Not so much horrified that my children lied to my face, but moreso that my dirty laundry or epic parent fail was hung out in the neighborhood for all to see. The lying was obviously bad as well, don't get me wrong, but I could address that without the entire neighborhood knowing that parenting fail.

So, after school our girls will be doing the walk of shame to Mr. David's house as they apologize, present him with the pack of pumpkin seeds that they purchased using their own money and will return to play in our yard where they will remain for the next two weeks. A 2 pronged consequence for their wrong doing & lying. 

I know every parent has a story similar to this whether it be stealing a piece of gum, cheating on an assignment, etc. I know. However, knowledge and awareness of others experiences does not remove the tarnish from my precious children's halos. I also know that we will have other situations filled with "tarnish" and I should just get over it and hope that we've nipped it in the bud with such a minor, insignificant offense. I just can't help but feel that their halos are a reflection of our parenting or lack thereof.

I can also and probably should look at the "glass half full" side of things and analyze the consequence as being the more accurate reflection of our parenting. In the end, I know we are great parents and that we have really great kids and this is one more lesson taught to make them even greater.