Mildly Complicit

Recently J told me about a profitable little business enterprise that a kid in her class has been running. He makes paper guns and sells them at a quarter a pop. The paper bullets are sold for ten cents a piece. By her accounting, he has sold at least ten guns.A couple of issues were bothering her - is this kind of activity allowed in school and is it fair for the boy to sell these things for real money.

She does not want to be the tattle tale and report him to the teacher because both the gun and bullet are harmless. Apparently, all the kids know about it but no has taken it upon themselves to inform the teacher. I am guessing like J, they must have mentioned this to their parents, and like me, those parents have not recommended that their child talk to the teacher about this. I find this whole situation intriguing at many different levels. The kids are in the least considering this a little outside the ordinary and  likely talking about this at home. They are not convinced that it is bad enough that the boy needs to reported - there is symmetry in their thought process. If that is true about the adults as well,they maybe chalking this up to a kid being silly and creative, having a little harmless fun -  expecting it will go away once the novelty has faded.

J has not talked about this in the last couple of weeks so it is quite possible that all potential buyers have already made their purchases and better yet reverse engineered it to make their own.This incident had me wondering if we as parents are sometimes complicit in bad outcomes in the lives of our children.As a group we failed to call this child's attention to something that may not be entirely cute, creative or silly. Maybe we have provided tacit encouragement as a group for him to up the ante some more.