Luke Skywalker Arrested

My oldest turns 16 tomorrow.  That blows my mind and it got me thinking about all the things my kids have done over the years to get in trouble, which led me to thinking about the bad things I did when I was a kid, which led me to thinking about how things are so different today than when I was a kid, the consequences are so much more extreme now.  Which then led me to think about maybe that's why parents overreact and instead of letting their kids learn the lesson, they defend them, along the way losing the opportunity to teach the moral of what's right and wrong.  (Yes, you just got the nickle tour of how my brain works... I'm not officially diagnosed ADHD, but, you see the thought 'trail'....)  I am ashamed to admit it, but I am guilty of being one of those parents.  Instead of embarassing my birthday boy by telling about one of his misdeeds, I'm going to share a story about my middle child.
We live in the desert; home to dirt, heat and cactus. Our house is older and on an acre and we have a lot of cactus, more than I would like to have.  I guess the technical term for several cactus is cacti.  Some cacti are not tall and beautiful like the majestic saguaros, they're more like weeds. You could burn prickly pear cacti and it would grow back with double the enthusiasm.  When the rainy season arrives some cacti fill up with so much water that they tip over, pulling up their roots.  We have a barrel cactus in our front yard that is held in place with cable because it did that very thing.  When a cactus is filled with water it can be soft, a little mushy, and almost like a ripe pineapple pinata. A rain filled cactus is like a gift from the gods to an 11 year old boy with an imagination.
It was in December of 2007 and we had just gotten a ton of rain.  The rivers and washes were flowing, streets were flooded, and there were cacti tipped over everywhere.  My 11 year old decided to go out and play in the backyard.  Go child; have fun, get dirty, breathe the fresh air!  Four days later, I was home sick from work when the doorbell rang.  It was our new neighbor, fresh to Tucson from the east coast, and he needed to show me something that my son had done.... Great, can't wait.  In between the back of all the houses in my neighborhood is a wash and when Middle Kid had been out playing in the rain 4 days earlier, he was playing Star Wars and Mr. East Coast Neighbor's poor prickly pear cactus was Darth Vader.  Lord Vader did not fare well against young Middle Child's light saber.  Now, had it been in the 1980s, my parents would have sent me over to clean it up, plant a new cactus, offer to sweep his driveway for penance and that would have been that but this was 2007 and Mr. East Coast watches America's Most Wanted.  My child was the devil and had to be stopped!  He was somehow under the impression that his weed - er, prickly pear, was worth $2,000 and that I owed him that much or he was pressing charges (a felony, according to him).  At that point, I said, "We're done here." and turned to walk back home.  This is when he said (and I swear I'm not making this up) that my child "needed help."  "Today it's sticks and cactus, tomorrow it's people and knives."  I spun back around, looked him dead in the eye and responded with two words, "He's eleven."  45 minutes later the police were at my door and paper arrested my 11 year old.  Of course my husband was not home or things would have gone vastly differently.  When the officer showed up, we sang like canaries.  When KC found this out, he shook his head and proceeded to tell me that I should have just shut my mouth and made them prove it.  I told him I didn't want to be "that parent" but after my boy was arrested, I wished I had been.  Feeling like that pissed me off for multiple reasons but I think the biggest reason was because instead of turning this into a life lesson for my son about stupid decisions and their consequences, I became what I loathe; the parent who finds excuses, does not hold her child accountable, and attempts to fix everything for him.  But I really didn't feel like I had a choice.  My barely double digits boy was arrested for fighting with a cactus.  Arrested!  As in, we were now in the criminal system.  Sorry, but we were going to fight this, to hell with the life lesson.  I had a surveyor out two days later to make sure it was actually Mr. East Coast's property and not the city's.  It was on the edge of Mr. EC's.  Damn.  My husband went to three different plant nurseries to get quotes on prickly pear cactus (although most people told me to just cut a paddle off one of ours, bury it in the ground and in no time, one would appear.  Weeds, I'm telling ya!  Weeds!)  The highest quote was $50 for the largest one they had.  Score one for us.  We talked to our friend who is a prosecuting attorney.  We talked to a lawyer.  Both were incredulous that the situation was allowed to manifest into what it had.  I was cautiously optimistic but I still lost five pounds in five days.  I couldn't sleep,  I was sick to my stomach and a wreck.  My child, a convict.  The day came for Middle Kid to go meet with a probation officer - I'm not sure why he never had an actual court date.  She was a sweet woman whose grandson whacked things in her backyard with a stick all the time and it wasn't because he "needed help", it was because he was a little boy.  She saw where the cactus was located in relation to the wash; he didn't jump a fence to get into the man's yard, the cactus was practically in the wash.  Most importantly, she recognized he was ELEVEN.  His punishment was he had to write an apology letter.  Done!  Had our new neighbor (who moved away about a year later) not been a crotchety old man who thought all cacti were protected species and who was convinced that all young people are speed freak vandals, he would have gotten an apology, his yard cleaned up, a new cactus, and his driveway swept. And my boy would have gotten a valuable lesson.  Instead, neighbor got a letter from a 6th grade boy with horrible penmanship saying he was sorry.  But, at that point, after all Middle Kid went through, he probably wasn't sorry.  He probably was daydreaming about the Halloween when he was 16 and able to go to the store and buy eggs and toilet paper and do the job right.  Maybe Mr. EC realized that and decided to get out of town while the gettin' was good.  But we're still not done with this, when Middle Child turns 18, we have to go apply to have his record expunged.
So, I get it, Mrs. Parent-That-I-Loathe.  Our society today doesn't let kids just be kids and screw up without throwing the book at them.  Poor Todd Peterson (sorry for throwing ya under the bus, Todd!) punched me in the eye in third grade for calling him Pee Pants Peterson.  I think he had to stay home one day from school and I'm sure he got his butt whipped by his parents; plenty of punishment.  But not today!  Today, if a kid gets in a fight at school, even elementary school, he's suspended long-term and subject to arrest.  Parents know this and instead of being able to teach their kid that fighting is bad, they have to worry about defending him legally so they can't work with the school while providing punishment at home, they're on the phone with their lawyer - over a playground fight.  Fighting kid learns that parents make consequences go away and he isn't accountable for his actions.  And I also get it, Little Couch Potato Johnny.  Any time an adult sees a kid outside playing, he calls the cops.  It's easier to just stay indoors and play video games.  Ugh.  It's hard to advocate for fresh air when arrest is the possible end result.  I hope this pendulum starts to swing the other way but I don't see that happening any time soon.  We now call for people to be fired for any mistake they make.  I think it may be that people don't know how to spell reprimand, so it's easier to just go with "FIRE HIM!"  But, it goes hand-in-hand with arresting Johnny for fighting on the playground (or Middle Kid for kicking Darth "prickly pear" Vader's ass.)