My son had all his money stolen yesterday. K200, or $100 USD.
My wife was escorting a guest with some friends to the market in K92 which is a well known hangout of pick pockets. For years now, every time we go into town, the kids ask "can I bring a camera, can I bring my money" and my response has always been the same "only bring what you're prepared to have stolen."
This particular trip I wasn't there to remind him and my son brought his wallet with all of his cash in it along to the market.
When I got home my wife said 'go talk to your son, he got pickpocketted today at market and lost 200 kina, maybe a kind word from Dad will help cheer him up, he's been depressed all day about it.'
You have to know my son at this point to know exactly that that comment meant to me. My son is a miser. He's a penny pincher. He gets no allowance, and has to do odd jobs to earn money. If he's doing a job for me, and I don't like how he's done it, he has to redo it or he doesn't get paid. My son doesn't burn through money, he sees something he may want, and determines it's quality, how long it may last him, and if he'd rather not save the money. The only place he really spends money is on other people. Freely, and generously. I respect the way my son handles money. He denies himself so he can bless others.
Saving up 200 kina would have taken him over a year, more likely two.
My instinct as a dad, was to completely solve his problem, and dig up the 200 kina myself and give it back to him. My desire was to completely protect my son from this blow. He's a sensitive boy.
I called him into the room.
"Son, tell me about the day"
he instantly began to tear up, and couldn't choke out the entire story before sobbing.
Then it hit me, this was a teachable experience, a dad/son moment, and if I did this wisely, he'd both learn from it, AND be comforted.
"Son, what do I always say before we go to market?"
"I don't remember."
"don't take what you can't afford to lose...."
"oh yeah".
"it sounds like you lost it all"
*sobs*
"Well son, let me tell you about how we live. When people rob from us, we can sometimes get some of the things back through insurance, and the rest of it, we need to learn to be okay with losing. I know it hurts, and it makes us mad, and we are tempted to want to hate the people who stole from us. But we can't hate them. We have to love them anyways. And we can't let it make us think that EVERYONE at market is bad, or everyone in this country is bad. We have to learn not to let ourselves be angry."
son: "I'm not angry dad, but I'm sad, they took my store card too."
me: "Well, when I file an insurance claim, I don't get it all back, I get a percentage of it back, like when we had that breakin and all my tools were stolen. I didn't get everything back. So, what if I was your insurance here, and I gave you back 170kina?"
son: "what?!!"
me: "I can't give it all back to you, but I can help with some. And you can consider this a 30kina lesson well learned instead of a 200kina lesson painfully learned."
My son didn't speak, but I handed him the money and he lit up. He went away and returned a few minutes later without saying a word but with 4 little smarties in his hand and handed them to me. I don't know exactly what was going through his head, but his moping stopped... and I'm hopeful he learned something.
And I learned something to.
A dad sees the things that are going to happen sometimes. I told the kids for years, warned them against the likelihood of being pickpocketted. I'm frankly surprised it hasn't happened before.
I saw it coming, I warned my kids, it happened anyway, and I chose to let them learn from it, while softening the blow.
At first I had a selfish thought... to me like "I knew this would happen, I tried to warn them... and now I'm the one who ends up suffering"
and it hit me.. that's what parents do. It's what mine did. And I was totally okay with that.
