Be careful what you teach 'em

At nap time I read Logan a book called "The Sandwich Swap" (a really cute book, by the way). Anyway, at the end of the book I found my self explaining to Logan what "swap" means and demonstrated by trading him my hair elastic for his monkey. Then we, of course, traded back. He got it.

Fast forward to tonight.

Tonight for Family Home Evening we decided to whip out an already-prepared lesson and activity (courtesy of Maegan - thanks for the wonderful gift!) Well it seemed like a lesson on the topic of prayer is one he could understand fairly well, so that's what we went with.

We talked about how when you need help, or if you're sad or you need anything, you can pray to Heavenly Father and He will hear your prayers and answer them. He was tuned out part of the time, but I think he understood more than we thought he did.

Fast forward to post-bedtime.

Logan usually stays put in his bed at bed time, but got out of his bed once two nights ago, and again last night and, you guessed it, tonight again. So, wanting to nip this little habit in the bud, Ben sends Logan back to bed and threatens to take away his beloved Monkey and blanky if he gets out of bed again (the usual threat). Well, unfortunately a few minutes later Logan came out again, saying something about "yummy yummy munchy honey cakes" (which I later found out comes from The Wiggles movie that he watched two weeks ago. Random).

So having to follow through on his threat, Ben sent Lo back to bed and confiscated Monkey and blanky. LOTS of tears and crying ensued. I think it was maybe 5 or 10 minutes later Lo timidly wanders out of his room and comes and tells me so proudly, "Mommy, I prayed and asked Heavenly Father to get my Monkey and blanky back."

Crap. What on Earth am I supposed to do now? Follow through on consequences or be the means of answering my little guy's prayer? Of course that FHE lesson would come back to bite me in the butt...
Seeing that I was wavering, Logan then went and got a different monkey from his bed and brought it out, handed it to me and said, "Mom, I'll swap you this sock monkey for my other monkey with brown eyes...?"
Great. Now my choice of nap-time book selection is coming back to haunt me too.
So, I had no choice but to give his Monkey and blanky back . Smarty McFarty pants.

I was frustrated, shocked that he would come up with this solution, feeling proud and holding back laughter all at the same time. I guess this is a sign that he really is listening, learning and applying. :-)