Bad Parenting 102

Riley had a friend over the other day and the next time I caught up with the boy's mum, she told me that her son had seen a "machete" whilst playing in Riley's room. We both had a laugh, knowing it would propbably not be a machete, surely I would have noticed a machete? Admitedly my danger radar is not set to maximum, as you can see, but I know we never bought him a machete, or any type of knife.

I do go on alert when I hear of kids carrying knives about. As a teacher, there have been a number of times when kids have had knives at school and they have always been the kids with a few too many burdens. I worried that Riley might be turning into one of these kids.

As soon as we got into the car, I casually asked him if he had a knife in his room and he said that yes he did. We only live two minutes from our friends, so that was basically the whole conversation.

I raced into Riley's room and saw the plastic box of things that have been washed post camping and needed to be put back into the camper trailer. In this box is a large kitchen knife. I had cleaned these items and placed them in the box by the front door expecting Cliff to put them back into the camper trailer. He just saw a plastic box filled with stuff and asumed it must have been Riley's. Admittedly as I type these words, the box, with knife, is still in Riley's room. I really should talk to Cliff about that...