To ask for your best 'parent lies' (lighthearted).

[ThatGingerOne]

We all know the ice cream man only rings his tune when there's none left

DD was having trouble with monsters at bedtime when she was about 3. I told her that minty breath (from brushing teeth) would scare the monsters away.

Double bonus was that she took extra care over tooth brushing after that!

Ds was faltering in the believing Santa thing. Christmas Eve and the international space station was due to fly over house. Dw told ds if he came out he might see Santa, ds was shouting hello to Santa as Issas went past some tree branches. DS is convinced Santa was flashing lights on the sleigh to say hello back!!!!

'Are you sure you're telling the truth? Because if Santa hears you tell a lie, he'll take one of your presents out of his sack.' Worked for years that one did.

Have recently deployed the McDonald's is closed one here too! Definitely writing some of these down for future use!

All the sweets and chocolates in the supermarket around Easter and Christmas are for the Easter bunny and Father Christmas to buy, we are only allowed to buy the little ones.
If they see other people putting them in their trolley it is because they are helping

I have the numbers of Elsa and Spider-Man in my phone and can call them at any time

The orange smarties are poisonous. Mummy will eat them to save you being ill because they don't affect mummies! Mine are older teens now and still save the orange ones for me.

Its not rice, no its not, its fairy pasta. its not different from the pasta you like just smaller for the fairies.

"Your tongue turns blue when you tell a lie" (said to small child and small child's friend when trying to figure out who failed to flush the loo. Worked a treat.

DH then tried to demonstrate to ours later that I may have told a brazen lie slight fiction myself about changing tongue colour. Despite this the 'blue tongue' accusation still works!

The words to that King's of Leon song are "Woah woah, your socks are on fiiiiiire"

Our television doesn't work until 5.30pm. Fact.

DC1 still believes this, aged 7, and has convinced all her friends (fairly easy to do, with the help of a timer at the socket - no power to the TV until then even though the switch is clearly on at the wall!). Our American nieces were incredulous and have told an entire school that English TVs don't work in the daytime .

I love potato van

My main lie is that the 'ride ons' outside the supermarket can only be operated by Grandparents. If DD wants to sit on it she can but there's no way I can get it to go round.
One set of grandparents live 3 hours away (and I don't think we've ever been shopping with them. The other set live on the other side of the world - and as DD is in effect their only grandchild (we lost her big brother to childhood heart disease two years ago - the wombat in my name) they can't put their hands into their pockets quick enough to treat her when they visit.

I was so vehemently anti-lies to frighten small kids into behaving with my first. I was such a martyr. My youngest however loves the book 'Little Rabbit Foo Foo'. If she runs away from us/refuses to hold hands or kicks off about not wanting to leave somewhere we tell her that the goonies are on their way out and she needs to be holding a grown ups hand to keep her safe. It's worked every time so far.

Wine makes mummy clever.

Not a lie but a TRUTH. I told dd that you mustn't go past the yellow line on the station platform.

So every time anyone stood too close to the edge of the platform, she'd loudly pipe up "Look, that man's standing over the yellow line! Why is he doing that? That's dangerous isn't it, Mummy? Will he be in trouble with the Guards?"

See also: Crossing the road when the man isn't green.

your socks are on fiiiiiire

Words cannot express how much I love this. (And cheers for the earworm.)

Mine doesn't like sweetcorn but loves yellow peas. I also told her that it was illegal to be carried once you were four and that the little round things on pylon wires could be cameras checking up on us. Sometimes we'd pretend she was still three though to beat the system

I told my DS when he was about 3 that his eyes flashed when he told a lie. He used to stand in front of me with his hands over his eyes telling me his baby sister did it.

My best lie was to my student (aged 16!) I told her that I had a degree in sarcasm. she believed me until the boy next to her told her that the word gullible was written on the ceiling.

I'm absolutely not trying to be a snotty cow or anything but it's never occurred to me to lie to my kid to get her to do what I want. I'm weighing up the pros and cons. I'm afraid that once I start I'll never stop as there are loads of things I could get her to do... but I don't think I can do any of it with a straight face.

I might have a go with food, though, since she won't eat anything that isn't pasta and swedish meatballs these days.

When my brother and I were small, we had a goldfish called Orangey. One day, when I was about 5, I woke up and he wasn't in his tank. My parents said he grew too big for his tank and went to live at the greenhouse (in a local park). Over the years, we made many trips to the greenhouse, wherein they pointed out the huge orange goldfish that was probably Orangey.
Ten years later, I was talking about the greenhouse with a friend and told her the story of Orangey.
My mother overheard. And started to laugh. She said it was time she told me something.
Orangey never went to the greenhouse.
I just never thought to question it...

Not a parenting one but I used to regularly babysit 2 horrors on a Saturday evening. Bedtime was when the lottery show finished. I recorded it one week and every Sat took the tape and after a wee while shoved it on. They went to bed with no problems as soon as it finished thinking it was about 9pm. On one occasion when they'd really been playing up.they were in bed by 7pm

'No, that's not broccoli love, they're green trees' worked every time.

'No I'm not eating sweets/choc I'm chewing my lip because I'm so worried about .....'

Chocolate Easter eggs turn to poop if you try to eat them before Easter Sunday. If one of them had snaffled any the others would shout 'You've just eaten poop!'

It's the law that children have to be in bed by the time it's dark. I used to say summer was a reward for good behaviour counting the days til mid October when the nights really came 'back'

If you kick a piece of rubbish on the street you have to put it in the bin. It's a Santa law, so a bigger law than the police. Yes, even if you didn't drop,it in the first place.

Yes, I'm counting to 15 then I'll come find you - hide and seek my way!

Dd is regularly told that there is traffic or a road is closed if I want her to have a nap in the car so go the long way home.

The play soft at the wildlife park isn't open today, it will be open next time we go with daddy.

We didn't bring any pennies to buy anything but she can look at the sweets and toys if she likes.

Orangey made me laugh. When my DFIL died my niece was in the car with us (but not her mum) as we drove to the local crematorium. She reminisced that the memorial garden there was where her hamster Bubbles had been taken when he died! There was a slightly hysterical atmosphere in the car, but given the already sad nature of the day no-one broke the news to her that Bubbles was more likely to have been disposed of in a plastic bag in the communal bins. She was 19 at the time!

I don't like to lie to DS, but when he was clearly ready to stop wearing nappies, day and night, I told him that supermarkets had run out of nappies.
We even went to Tesco and couldn't find any.
But did find some nice pants.

I remember my mum telling me the reason a house was on fire was because the owner didn't cut his nails. Doh!

And apparently my little brother was a birthday present for me. Not an accident at all (as I found out almost 20 years later).

I also tell DS that me annoying him is in my mother's contract, that I signed when he was born.
It's more of a joke, though, as he didn't believe me.