Crayon on the Wall

Sometime last month, I had the Goo Gone out, and I was cleaning a sticky residue from a price tag off of a picture frame. 

Meanwhile, Jarem had headed upstairs to play in his room.  I didn't think anything of it, because Jarem typically isn't a mischevious child.  As I was finishing up, here came Jarem back downstairs calling proudly,  "Mom, I wrote on the walls in my room".  I was shocked because Jarem hasn't ever written on walls before, and he is not one to flaunt it when he does something bad.  I said, "You did what?", and he repeated it again, still with no remorse.

I went up to look and see if he really had.  Sure enough, he had written in two different large areas on his wall with crayons.

Here's one

And this is part of the other...the other bigger picture didn't turn out well.  He was so proud of this turtle he drew and the other things.  I couldn't figure it out.  I told him it was naughty to write on the walls, and he shouldn't be proud.  I asked him why he did it.

He said that he saw the picture on the "Goo Gone" bottle, and he thought he would draw on the walls because we could clean it off with the Goo Gone.  Yes, there were pictures of wall drawings on the bottle, and it sparked the idea for him.  I had never used it for cleaning crayon off walls, but we gave it a try.  It didn't work nearly as well as it claimed, but since he used the washable crayons, we managed to get most of it off.

After he realized that it was a bad thing, he was embarrassed that I was taking pictures.  He didn't want me to show anyone, so here he is trying to hide it.

It was innocent enough that even though I was a little frustrated, I couldn't really be mad at him.  He was so ashamed and wanted to clean it himself.  It made me think how much I've mellowed out since my older ones were his age.  I would have been much more upset then.