Child Jewelry Box.

Q: Children in another family rummaged through their mother's jewelry box and lost her diamond engagement ring. And they are still able to sit down?!? My mom let me go through her jewelry box, but she knew I was a responsible kid who just wanted to try on, not toss things about. She would have gone ballistic over this, and rightly so...

A:I wasn't allowed to rummage through my mother's jewelry box. That was one of the things that was off limits to me as a child in our home. She did allow me to look through it a few times, but that was when I was 17-18 years old and even then only when she was right there. If I had done it without her present, I wouldn't have been able to sit down either! Her jewelry box didn't have a working lock either, nor did it need one. I understood what rules were. Having sensible, consistent rules actually gave me some comfort in my life, because I knew right from wrong. My mother didn't have a lock on her jewelery box and I did spend alot of time at home alone when I was growing up so I could have gone in it any time, but never did. I knew to respect my mother's property and of she gave me an appropriate amount of respect as well. On a couple of these

shows, it is obvious the parents don't respect each other. In the episode with the child who had to sleep with his mother, the father seemed to have an idea of what to do or at least what to try to get the brats to behave, but the mother thwarted it every time. In one scene, he told the child not to put her feet on the table, but the mother said it was OK, but the father took her out of the room and she went into a fit. The nanny stepped in and stopped the mother from going into the other room to "rescue" the child from her father. He wasn't hitting her or anything like that, just trying to calm her down. The mother didn't want to listen, but she eventually did.