Cheating and Ethics

OK, I don’t rant very often, but today is just one of those times. Do you read Dear Abby?? Yesterday and today she is running letters in response to “Valedictorian Contender” who was unhappy about the cheating going on around him/her, but was uneasy about turning in the cheaters. I can understand about not wanting to be a “squealer”, but the responses really got to me. From a school administration who was too buy with REAL problems and chose to ignore “good” students caught using drugs at lunch, to moms feeding kids in the grocery store and throwing away the wrapper and not paying for the food.

Our children won’t learn morality from TV or other kids. It has to start at home. With the “little things”. Children need to be accountable for their actions. Society has gotten to the point of not wanting to hurt children’s feelings. They can’t loose – it will hurt their psyche. Good Grief!

It’s not easy as a mother trying to instill the sense of morality in your children. One of the hardest things I did was taking one of my sons back to a local craft store, and making him turn in the miscellaneous beads he had found on the floor, and put in his pocket. Now he had less than 20 plastic beads. I’m sure the store would have swept them up and thrown then out. But the point was the beads did not belong to my son, and he should not have taken them. Personally, I think the lady he turned them into over-reacted. But I did NOT want her to tell him it was OK either. I never had another occurrence of his taking something that did not belong to him. And yes, the store was 5-6 miles away, I wanted to start dinner when I got home, I had other things to do that evening. But this was the point where the lesson could be learned – needed to be learned. So I took time to teach him. (And it was all I could do not to cry when he was so upset). I never claimed it was easy to teach life lessons.

In this world you get what you earn. If you cheat, you should get caught. Do you want the test cheater fixing your car? (hmm, he told you the part was bad, was it?). Do you want the liar promising to show up to fix your leaky faucet? (will he arrive?) Do you want the person who steals things, in your car or in your house? If you want none of these, then why is it not important to teach our children to tell the truth, not to cheat, not to take things that don’t belong to them? These undesirable activities have a beginning in childhood, and need to be stopped when they start. It’s called being a PARENT!!

OK, I could go on for pages more, but I’m done. Thanks for listening!