Will you guys send me to jail?

As much as we would not want to, we all "threaten" our kids - primarily to improve our convenience factor in day to day living. E.g. "Don't take off your seatbelt or the police might take you away from us". "If you throw things at us and behave like a monkey,  we might have to ask the bear to take you to the monkeys." The list goes on :)

Remember how we had hidden half of his birthday toys - we did it for a lot of reasons - 1. We can stagger and give him new toys later (because he needs a never-ending supply of toys, new toys to be more precise) 2. We can re-gift the things we got multiple pieces of 3. There is fewer things for us to clean and manage. Quite smart - you would think! Except that we hid the toys right in his playroom on the floor - just hoping that obscurity will be security. And it was not.

After a 30 min of peace and quiet - which I was absolutely loving - and trying to push away all thoughts of what must he be doing - I dared to go into his room - and oh my God! He had ripped open all the toys. Scores of tiny lego pieces, puzzle pieces, books, cars - you name it - all on the floor. Totally drove me mad - and I called Anuj asking why he had hid the toys over here. And that lead to a fight between us - and we were all shouting and mad! Anuj was hurriedly hiding the few that were not ripped open yet. Poor Milosh, he got scared and understood that this was more than a time out type of situation. He started crying and asked me "Will you guys send me to jail?"

Lol - that made me feel pity and laughter all at the same time - and I hugged him and confirmed that he was not going to jail for this and that we would never send him to jail. When we were all cool later , he asked me questions about why it was a big deal to open those toys. I thought it was nice of him to attempt and understand it - and its also interesting that we might shout our hearts out at kids - and all they get out of it is that my parents are mad, and I have probably done something wrong. They usually have no idea - even though we tell ourselves that we are being mad at them to "teach them a lesson". I think our being mad at kids is just an ability to vent out our frustrations, also because we can vent it on them so much more easily than on a spouse, a colleague, the weather, the government, our lives or ourselves.

Anyway, I explained to him that these were toys for other kids when we go to their birthday parties. And he understood it. He even chuckled and said I know where the other toys are hidden :)