your child does something that makes you so unbelievably happy and proud that you think, if only for a moment, that you might actually be doing something right.

A couple of days ago, Caitlin came home from school and told me that she needed to talk to me. She told me, "I know you said I should never keep important secrets from you, so I need to tell you something." She then went on to tell me something a friend of hers told her and told her not to tell anyone. She said that she didn't want to betray her friend's trust, but felt like this was one of those secrets that I wanted her to tell me.

I told her that this was definitely one of those secrets she needed to tell me and how proud I was of her for coming to me about it. I know she felt awful about betraying her friend and that she doesn't fully understand why it's important to tell me these things, but she did it because she felt it was the right thing to do. Then, I told her that I was going to have to tell someone else so they could take the appropriate steps to keep her friend safe. She was SO upset. She was DEVASTATED...thinking that her friend was going to find out that she was the one who told and that her friend would be mad at her. I sat her down and explained to her that it was more important for her friend to be safe than it was to worry about her friend being angry with her. I promised that I would try my best to make sure her friend didn't find out that she was the one that told, but if she did and her friend was angry, to just remember that she did the right thing and sometimes doing the right thing isn't the easy thing.

I am so unbelievably happy that Caitlin came to me and confided in me. As I mentioned in my last post, she drives me unbelievably insane at times, but when it comes to the truly important things, she has proven to me time and time again that she is a mature, responsible, and intelligent child with an amazing amount of integrity.