My Little Cheater

Yesterday, when Alex came home from Kindergarten, we checked his worksheet. He had been working on the letter "J", and wrote the capital one quite well, but still needed a little bit of work on the lower case "j".Then I looked at the bottom of the sheet where they fill in the missing letters. 3 out of 4 blanks needed to be corrected because he put in capital letters, instead of following the pattern of the small letters shown. I had gone over how he needs to follow the pattern of either capital or smaller case letters earlier that morning, but went over it again. Then I tried to praise his effort by pointing out that he got the last letter right - a small "j". He said, "I didn't even write that one!" I said, "You didn't? Who did?" He proudly explained, "I asked someone else to write it -- and they did! And I didn't tell the teacher! I cheated!" Trying to ignore my overwhelming pride I felt right then (said sarcastically), I then said, "It looks like we need to practice your name a little bit - it looks like your teacher corrected some of it." He said, "I wrote that." I said, "No you didn't - it's in the teacher's red pen." He said, "She gave it to me and I wrote it."
Right now he's practicing his "k" letters, soon to be followed by his name.