children experimenting with fire.

[Target Practice]

Your mistake was in making it taboo. It MUST be cool if they can't do it, thus desirable, but they know they can't do it when mom's around..

Let them poke at a campfire with a stick.

Tell them where, when, and what to poke.

Let them light candles, under your supervision.

And tell them if they do it again they get the buttwhooping of their lifetime.

It's the same thing with kids and cookies-- Mom says I can't have one? I'll get one at night, when she won't know...

[ShooterJM]

if she's old enough to have an allowance she's old enough to learn financial responsibility. as she is the one who burned the carpet, she can pay for it. responsibility for one's actions should be taught early and consistently. maybe if more parents did this their kids would learn actions have consequences and they wouldn't turn out to be such idiots when they hit their teens and 20s and start to experience independence.

I agree wholedheartedly. I don't even want to think what would have happened to me if I did that at 8! I was thinking she was like 4 or something.

[Restola]

My parents killed the fire-bug in us by letting us play with fire in controlled settings with a lot of supervision. A few sessions where we each got a box of matches to use at our fire pit let us play with it until we got bored. This was about 15 years ago, but apparently it worked.

[xmetal2001]

I never played with fire much as a young child, in teenage years I was(am?) a pyro...so are all my friends, I think its unavoidable so you might as well teach them basic safety.

[Indignant]

Just saying no will make em wanna do it more. Let them experiment, under supervision, but put out a line. They aren't going to learn where to stop unless you show them firsthand. it's like the kid that never drank before in his life and when he finally did he had to gt his stomach pumped because he didn't know his limit. It worked for me, as far as fire goes.