Guilty....but with an explanation

Elizabeth's school year started out a little rough, behavior-wise...
She just has so much energy and she loves to talk, talk, talk so she was a little unprepared for all the seriousness that is 1st grade these days.

Her class has this behavior card system where everyone starts the day with a green card. Then should any behavior problems arise, they change their card to yellow, and then if needed, to red.

Within the first two weeks of school, Eliz had changed her card to yellow almost everyday and once even to red !
She hadn't told us about this moving-her-card-almost-everyday business until I received her class newsletter which outlined this behavior policy and stated that any student in the class whose card remained green the whole week would receive a behavior reward on Friday. So since Eliz's behavior rewards seemed to be M.I.A. she fessed up about all her yellow cards.

But she's improved so much throughout the year and has only changed her card to yellow a few times since then.

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Last night, Eliz was behaving a little unusual. By unusual, I mean she was actually listening to me so I didn't have to ask her to do something 5 times. She got ready for bed all by herself without trying to negotiate with me or stall. She was just being too compliant so I knew something was up, but I let it go.

She went to bed and since Mig and Michael had already turned in early for the night, I went to bed too.
About 20 minutes later, Elizabeth's dark, shadowy figure appeared by my bedside.

Me: "Elizabeth? You're supposed to be asleep already..."
Eliz: Silence.
Me: "Elizabeth, what do you need sweetie?"
Eliz: "I moved my card today."
Me: "You did? Why didn't you tell me earlier? What did you do?"
Eliz: "Well, see...uh..I was playing during recess with the sand and making ghost sand..."
(I don't know what 'making ghost sand' is, but apparently it involves throwing sand up in the air as you will soon see....)
"...and then some wind came and the wind blew sand into some kid's eyes, and so I had to move my card to yellow."

(Wow, I was impressed with the way she had both personified and projected blame onto the wind. Very sophisticated.)

Me: "That's ok Elizabeth. Just go to back to bed."

But she didn't move. She just stood there.

Eliz: "I have to tell Dad."
Me: "No, that's ok. He's asleep. Just go to bed."
Eliz: "But I have to tell Dad."

I knew that her poor little guilty conscience had probably prevented her from falling asleep before this so I finally said, "Ok. Tell Dad then."
So she woke him up and told him the whole story about making the ghost sand (which I still don't fully understand) and how the wind just came and blew the sand into this kid's eyes.

So Mig told her, "It's ok, we'll talk about it tomorrow."

So with the guilt removed from Eliz's little conscience, she went back to bed and fell right asleep...