My eight-year-old son Nick went through a serious snowman phase this winter. Not casual snowmen—carefully planned ones. Every afternoon he bundled up, chose the same corner of our lawn, and built them with names, scarves, and stick arms. He called them “official citizens.”
And almost every morning, they were gone.
At first I blamed melting snow. Then I noticed tire tracks—always cutting across that same corner. Our neighbor, Mr. Streeter, routinely cut across our lawn when pulling into his driveway. I spoke to him twice. He brushed it off. “It’s just snow.”
One afternoon, Nick came home quiet.
“He did it again,” he said. “He smashed Simon.”
When I offered to talk to the neighbor again, Nick shook his head.
“I have a plan,” he said calmly.
The next day, he built a bigger snowman. No face. “I’m waiting,” he told me.
That evening, I heard a crunch—then shouting. Mr. Streeter’s car sat half on our lawn, his tire hissing. Hidden inside the snowman’s base was a flat rock.
“You broke my tire!” he snapped.
Nick answered quietly, “You broke my snowmen.”
Silence followed.
Mr. Streeter paid for his tire and, the next morning, placed bright flags marking the property line. From then on, the snowmen survived.
A few days later, he brought Nick a carrot “for the next one.”
My son didn’t yell. He didn’t fight. He simply stood his ground—and taught a grown man that small things matter.
