Thought of the Day 11.17.09

The other day, Spencer and Ethan were doing what young children do: they were squabbling over a toy, which they both claimed to have had first. Since our general principle is that both boys need to share with each other and not fight, I took the next logical step. “Alright, if you can’t share properly, I’ll just take it away and no one can have it.”

This sent Ethan into apoplexy but Spencer simply issued a nonchalant, “That’s fine.” Feeling a bit like Solomon, I realized that there were several levels of evil going on here, so I made Ethan happy by giving him the toy.

At this point, Spencer complained of the injustice. So I told him that he clearly did not care very much about the toy, whereas Ethan clearly did want it quite badly. I told him that I was also very disappointed in him not yielding to his younger brother over something so obvious. But the worst violation of all was the fact that he would gladly have lost access to the toy himself so long as that deprivation made Ethan miserable.

A minister of justice must never let his rules be used as an instrument of injustice, especially by a five-year-old.