Kayli Upholds the Law

Kayli and I tend to be “on the go” a lot, driving both streets and interstates with equal frequency. Being one that thinks out loud, I might say “Oh-oh, I better slow down”, if I happen to see a police car. Then, of course, Kayli hears me and says “What mom? What you say?” then I explain the policeman’s job to give people tickets when they are going to fast. She also knows that we could get a ticket if we aren’t wearing our seatbelts because of the one or two times she’s tried to refuse sitting in her carseat, and, of course another mom might have explained that it’s unsafe or that we could get hurt or something along that line, but I instead opted to tell her a policeman would give us a ticket and that would be really bad because they cost a lot of money! She has no real idea what that means except she knows it’s really bad. So, now I realize I haven’t “painted the best picture” of police officers for Kayli. But, how handy is it to have a little voice in the back seat that yells “Slow down, mom, police car!” whenever she spots one?!
Ok, so my better judgement kicked in yesterday as we saw a police car, and even though I know he was doling out a ticket to the poor soul he had pulled over, I told Kayli “It looks like that nice police officer is helping someone who’s car is broken” and then, just for good measure, I told her how helpful police can be and that they want to keep us safe, blah, blah, blah. So, Kayli listens intently to everything I say, then, as we get off the interstate and approach the stop sign, Kayli yells “Stooooop Mom. You don’t stop at stopsign, those police give you ticket!” Ok, I tried.