Warning: The post contains a lot of tween slang. You may want to have your tween translate or have the urban dictionary open in another browser.

A big thank you goes out to my friend Mocha Mob. She one of my real life friends who also blogs. And she is GREAT in the advice department. And I’m loving this one…even if it did cost me some money.

Over the weekend, the Three Amigos and I went to the mall. I rarely go to the mall, but Old Navy was having a sale…so to the mall we went. And while we were there, I helped the kids with their summer bucket lists. H1 wanted snapbacks. They are  baseball caps that snap in the back…right, when I was growing up they were called hats. But now, they are called snapbacks. And there is a store in the mall that sells these. H1 got two while we were there.

And so you are familiar with the snapback world, if they have a sticker on the like the Superman hat does, you NEVER take it off. It shows the world you bought an authentic snapback. Even though it snaps in the back…you still need that piece of authenticity.

So to say that he loves them would be an understatement. They represent everything swag. On his bucket list is that he wants to have at least 3 by the end of the summer. He’s been a big help to me in my post surgical life, so, I bought him two.  When we got home, I reminded him to put his slides and his snapbacks up (slides are shoes). He wanted to wear them both while we watched the BET awards. The swag of the slides and the snapbacks was appropriate for what we were watching, right?

But after the awards show, I didn’t think the swag needed to continue. Or, I kind of thought it was time for bedtime swag (i.e. pajamas). So I mentioned again, “You may want to put your stuff that we just bought today up in your room. And that was the end of the conversation.

Until at 6:30 a.m. I heard a scream of terror. “Noooo….you crazy dog! Why did you do that to my shoes?” Uh oh…you know where this is going. But you know what? This is exactly why we keep our bedroom doors closed! The dog!!! And guess what? We are dog sitting for a friend…so we have two dogs in our house this week. Two dogs who like to chew up things. I think he even woke up one of his sisters to tell them about the travesty of not putting your things in their proper place. Well, he would actually tell the sister about the travesty of the dog eating his shoe. I however, would remind him of the proper place fact. ‘Cause that’s what I do.

And we talked about. And he said he understood. So I mentioned that I have to take some things back to a store and I would see if they have the slides. And he said okay. Until about an hour later and I heard the scream again….this time, the dog got a hold of one of the snapback. I guess we didn’t learn the lesson about putting our things away. And now that this is a pattern, I’m not going to buy any more…until there’s proof that he learned the lesson.

And what you might ask, does Mocha Mob have to do with anything? Earlier this school year I was lamenting about tween behavior and she asked me one question. “What would happen if you let natural consequences take it’s course?” And I couldn’t answer it…until today. The most gratifying feeling in the world happens…because natural consequences are sometimes the best kind of consequences!