Hard Lessons

Yesterday, we had an incident occur that was hard on us as parents and on our oldest dd. Our oldest is 11 yo and has an email account. We monitor it and keep tight control on who is on her email list. However, this day I hadn't seen the emails that had come through and our dd forwarded an email to her entire list without reading it first. ugh

What to deal with first? She sent the email to her dad and I and when we read it, we were appalled. It was violent and awful. Absolutely not something we would want her to read and definitely not something we would want her to send to other people.

We talked with her about it and she told us that she had not read it and sat down to send out an apology to everyone. Then we made her read it so that she would know what she had subjected others to. She was crying and apologizing. Next we made her type up another more detailed apology email to everyone explaining what she had done and asking for forgiveness.

But that's not all. She had several friends on her list that are irl friends and we had her call them personally to apologize to their parents. She then had to call two sets of Grandparents and an Aunt that she had sent it to to apologize. It was agonizing to watch her struggle through the humiliation and embarrassment as she admitted her failure.

Everyone she has talked to has been gracious and loving. We are blessed to have such friends to help guide our children in this walk with the Lord. Hopefully, we will not have this issue come up again. Some things are changing and some privileges will be lost, but hopefully she will grow and become a better person because of this.