The Writing's on the Wall

When was the last time your children wrote on the wall? 

Have they ever?



Big Prince is 10 years old and I don't remember him ever writing on the wall. Not once.
He drew on his quilt with a felt-tip pen once when he was 5 or 6. He tried to blame his brother, who was less than 1 at the time. The hubby found the drawing while tucking BP in at night and had it been on paper I'd have found it entertaining. But it wasn't, it was on his quilt. I was not happy!

Little Prince has never written on the wall. He has, however, pulled wallpaper off the wall. He saw a piece of paper poking out and pulled. He ended up tearing a whole section off the wall. Again, not happy.

Neither of them have done anything like that for a long time. I thought I didn't need to worry about writing on the wall anymore, even with LP being 5. But it turns out I was wrong.

The other day I came downstairs and saw the Hubby staring at the wall. I wondered if he'd gone crazy until he looked me in the eye and told me to look. I walked into the kitchen and he pointed at this...


This light switch is high up and that drawing is too small and neat to belong to LP. It's the work of BP. The anger bubbled inside me but I tried to quell it. I shouted BP into the room, asked him why he did it.

"I don't know." was all I got.

I shouted. BP stomped. Then he lost (I confiscated) his iPad for the day.

I thought that was it, that there'd be no more writing on the wall. But no...

He also wrote his brother's name, I blurred it out.
When I shouted at him for writing on the wall in the kitchen he failed to mention he'd done this too. When I asked him why he said he didn't want to get in more trouble. Although I understood, I had to walk away as anger took hold of me. He was told not to do it again and punished, but I couldn't talk to him. I couldn't understand why, at 10 years old, he would pick up a pen (that's right, a pen!) and write on the wall.

I still can't. Whenever I think about it anger ties knots in my stomach again. I mean, what possessed him?!

Have your children ever stumped you with their actions?