A Healer’s Geste

Moral Dilemma

Hans’ new favorite book is The Cat in the Hat. “Hat! Hat!” He cries as he runs to the bookshelf as soon as he sees me sitting down.

What I did not remember when I purchased the book was that the story ends by leaving the children with a moral dilemma:

Then our mother came in
And she said to us two,
“Did you have any fun?
Tell me. What did you do?”

And Sally and I did not know
What to say.
Should we tell her
The things that went on there that day?

Should we tell her about it?
Now, what SHOULD we do?
Well…
What would YOU do
If your mother asked you?

Of course, if the mother asked them it would be wrong for the children to lie. But what would I do if it had been me? I wouldn’t have lied directly, but I wouldn’t have spent half a second deciding not to tell what had gone on there that day. After all, I would figure, I hadn’t done anything wrong and there was absolutely no evidence, so why rock the boat and disturb the peace?

However, now I am the Mother. What would I want Hans to do? I’m not sure I’d want to know what went on, except perhaps as a warning not to leave my children attended only by a fish, however consciencous. Not knowing would at least alleviate my responsibility to decide if the children were deserving of discipline. But, oh, what could they do? Would I see it that way if I heard their story after the fact? Nothing was hurt, everything is clean, the children have nothing on their conscience…the easy thing not only for the children but also for the mother is not to say anything.

Of course, the easy course is rarely the correct course.

Well… What would YOU do?