Forgive Like a Child

William may have taught me a lesson in forgiveness today, and I've got some pride to swallow later today as we owe him a pretty big apology.

Last month Austin and I were at target alone. Weird, that we'd ever have that opportunity, and weirder that when given the opportunity all we wanted to do was shop for surprises for the kids. Yep, we're those parents. We saw the cutest little batman sweat pants and sweatshirt, which we knew William would love. He was so excited Monday morning to wear his new gear to school.

His teacher emailed me and asked that I not send the cape back with the jacket because all of the boys wanted to play with it and it was distracting, so the next day William wore the jacket with no cape.

Then we never saw the jacket again.

We both reminded him every day that he needed to look, and I had gotten a note that the lost & found would be going to a donation center after the semester ended. I knew if he didn't find it in those 2 weeks it'd be gone, so I kept harping on him. His answer never changed, "I put it in my cubby but it's just gone". I've seen him "look" for objects before and claim they're missing, only to go in the room and see them right in front of my face. So, being told it was "just gone" just irritated me more and more. After the semester ended we told him it was probably just gone and we dropped it.

Well, today I was in his classroom and the kids were getting ready to go to PE so they were told to go get their jackets. I saw a little boy, who we will call J, get 2 jackets from his backpack.

I blurted out, "William! Is that your batman jacket?"

J: NO! This is MINE!

Ms McC: Wait wait, J. Is this REALLY yours?"

*J drops jacket and walks off.

Ms McC, whispering: We've had a problem with him taking things. I remember the first day William wore this, it went missing before recess. I was searching in all of the backpacks and then the jacket just appeared on the floor in the middle of the room and no one would claim responsibility. But we've had quite a problem with things from the cubby area going missing.

William reminded Ms McC that they used to keep J's cubby area on the opposite side of the room so that nothing went missing, and kindly said "maybe we can try that again?" I gave him a hug and said I was sorry about his jacket. He said, "Why? I got it back!" and skipped off.

To have forgiveness like that! He doesn't even care that the boy stole his jacket, he's just excited to have it back and is carrying on with his day. Meanwhile, I'm sitting at home, hours later, stewing over how frustrating it is that someone would just go into the cubby area and steal another person's jacket. A kindergarten student! Also, to think that upon bringing this jacket home his parents wouldn't reprimand him and make him return it. I can't imagine.

I feel like I owe William a big apology for the way I've reacted to this missing jacket, but I think the better plan is to silently let him teach me a little bit about forgiveness and moving on.