An expensive lesson in honesty

So - I'm curious if anyone has thoughts on this story. One morning about two weeks ago, Allison colored in a library book. I almost posted something about that morning - it was a morning sans ritalin and filled with many of the *poor choice* behaviors that seem to be less frequent these days. Another post for another day.... and I'm not suggesting that lack of aligned brain chemistry excuses the poor choices.... as is evidenced by the rest of the story.

So, anyway, Allison had colored in the Lola character in the Charlie and Lola book blue on three pages (of a 24 page book). Brian and I talked to her about how you have to treat books with respect - particularly library books because other kids will use them to. To reinforce this lesson, we (I?) decided she should tell the librarian what had happened. So we took the library book back to return it and notified the desk librarian. We told him it was colored in, and he made a comment to the effect of "I'm sure it wasn't *you*, right?" and we said "no - it was." He seemed a bit taken aback that we were admitting to the offense. He made a note, said that if there was going to be a fine it would show up on her account, and said that it based on the coloring (3 blue heads on 3 pages) he didn't really expect any fine at all.

Well, there was a fine - $17. The library had decided the book needed to be replaced at a cost of $17. This also effectively froze her account. Because we had gone this far with it, I had her take the $17 out of her piggy bank and today we went to the library. I checked to make sure the $17 was really for replacement of the book and the librarian (different one) very gravely told me that the blue color could not be erased and therefore the book must be replaced.

Additionally, since her account had been frozen (preventing me from renewing things before vacation) and the library had the wrong e-mail account information in it (so I was not receiving any notifications on her account) she had also accumulated another $7.50 in fines. So Allison paid her $17 and I paid the $7.50 in fines. For this $24.50 - Allison got to keep the original book she colored in. This made Allison very happy and me annoyed. I was annoyed anyway and then to have a very positive reward for her at the end of the tunnel that was supposed to teach her that if she couldn't respect library property then there was going to be a LOSS of privileges....... Ugh.

We COULD have returned it and it would have staying in circulation - probably without any complaints from other patrons. One part of me knows that it is important to be honest and face the appropriate consequences. But another part of me (the part that is trying to teach an important lesson to a 7-yr old) wishes that there was a more moderate fine (maybe $5-$10) that wouldn't have resulted with her getting to take home the book. But now that we've paid $24.50 for it - what do we do?