I gave my son a baseball as a gift once and he always keeps it with him. He keeps in his pocket when he’s eating, he keeps it in his backpack at school, and when he’s sitting in his room, he throws and catches it. One day he was catching the ball in the bathroom with one hand while he was brushing his teeth. I’ve told him not to do that in the bathroom because he might break something, and he did. He broke the glass shower enclosure, so I needed a shower enclosure replacement in NJ.

Kids never listen to a word you say, unless there’s some kind of punishment involved. In order to make sure that my son wouldn’t toss the ball around where he wasn’t supposed to, I punished him by taking away his allowance for a year. I told him that the money from his allowance would go to paying for the new shower enclosure. He wasn’t too happy to hear that, but it’s for his own good. He tried to beg and plead with me to change my mind, but I refuse to give in. It’s the only way he’ll learn not to do something that I’ve told him not to do.

It’s been a while since the shower enclosure replacement was done. All things considered, the enclosure looks better than the one that my son broke, so there is a good side to all of this. My son is still mad that he doesn’t have an allowance, but he’ll get over it. Before he knows it, that year will go by quickly and he’ll be able to start getting money again, that is, if he doesn’t break anything else by tossing the baseball in the air. I think he’s learned his lesson, at least for now.