i can’t say that i’ve ever had much of an inclination to spend any of my free time with fishing pole in my hand, although i’m not exactly sure when i developed the disposition and as i get a little older, i sometimes think it might not be a bad way to spend an afternoon afterall.

in that spirit we decided it might be fun to spend the morning watching odin’s cousins fish with a few dozen other local youth in a fishing derby sponsored by walmart.

it seemed an innocent enough affair; everyone registers for free and even though kids between the ages of 3 and 16 compete for a “real” prize bicycle, everyone goes home with a little bag of goodies so that nobody feels left out.

but wouldn’t you know it – we weren’t there more than a half an hour when someone spotted a fellow parent cheating for their child by hauling in fish after fish after fish. in very short order while many of the kids had caught perhaps one or two fish, it appeared as if the child prodigy had caught a dozen!

certainly we’re not quite to the point where we need to tell anything to odin since he’s happy just to watch play on the rocks as his grandpa salmi attempts to teach the youngsters a thing or two about how to catch a perch. but i was very aware that much sooner rather than later that we’d have to explain to him why some parents cheat. and why cheating is bad and why cheaters never win and so on and so forth; everyone has heard this sort of speech and any parent has probably given it. but it’s much different to think about having to give it for the very first time. to your own child.

is there some some of concise, textbook answer available online? perhaps a wikipedia for parenting advice? how much detail do you go into at what age? how do you explain that a parent is cheating for their child? do you tattle on the cheating parent and teach a different and perhaps unintended lesson? do you confront the cheating parent in private? or maybe you do nothing and simply fish with your child, enjoying the afternoon, teaching the best lesson of all by not cheating?

would you choose to do anything differently if you knew that the cheating parent’s children were going to win the top prize in two different age groups?