To shame or to guilt?

That is the question.

When we were leaving playgroup today, Penny found a tore up Tootsie Roll Pop somewhere in the depths of the trunk of the car. I'm thinking it was from Halloween. She showed it to me, half cracked, chocolate showing, hair and fuzz stuck to it, and said she would not eat it but  wanted to hold it and that she would throw it away when we got home. Okay. Whatever. I pretty much instantly forgot about it.

Until. Until we get home, and she hands me a stick and tells me that someone else ate the sucker, that it 'Wasn't me!' but somebody ate it. So...yeah, she thinks I'm an idiot. And she also just ate a six-month old sucker that someone else may have started eating, and then disposed of in the third row of seats, to sit and fester for half a year, so that is concerning. But before I can react, this article that I read in Parents magazine pops into my head, and I can only remember the gist of it which was either that when your kid is lying, you should shame your kid, but definitely not make them feel guilty OR you should NEVER shame your kid, but instead try to make them feel guilty. Doing the wrong thing will have life-long consequences and a 85% chance of leading to a life of crime and destitution.

The one thing I do clearly remember from the article is that instead of getting angry or giving a punishment when your kids is obviously lying to you, you're supposed to say things like 'I'm really disappointed in you. Or you disappoint me.' Or any other simile's to disappoint that I could not think of in the moment. So I put all my scholarly magazine-learnin' into action and told her 'I am so disappointed that you ate that sucker and then you lied about it. That makes me so disappointed. Your actions are disappointing. I was disappointed when the Fat-free French Vanilla Cappuccino was out at QT yesterday.' I was on a role with the d-word.

And then she lost. her. shit. She was hysterical. She literally ran upstairs, crawled under her dresser and howled and wailed. Like I had beat her, screamed at her, put her in time out for thirty years...it was insane. So I get a little worried because clearly I had done whatever Parents magazine told me DO NOT DO unless you hate your kid and want her to be a bulimic cutter in middle school, and I didn't have time to consult the magazine to see how to fix this mess I made, so I just swooped her up and rocked her for about five minutes. When she finally calmed down, she said she was sorry for eating the sucker and lying, and then I taught her to stick her finger down her throat to puke up the Ebola sucker, which will also be useful for her bulimic cutter teenage years.

I've been dissecting this event in my head all evening, and I still can't decide if she got so upset because of shame, guilt, or because the sky was the wrong shade of blue. But either way, I bet it will be at least another ten hours before she disobeys/lies to me again. If she sleeps that long.