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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To ask what lies do you tell your children?

121 replies

RevolutionofourTime · 12/05/2020 17:23

I have always made up stuff for my kids. Recently I’ve been reflecting that when I was a kid, this was something my male relatives (dad, uncles, cousins) did.

DH comes from a different culture, and has no imagination, so I’ve taken on the role of maker-upper in the family. Who is in charge of the made up stuff in your household? I’m curious about the gender divide.

DCs are now 11 and 9 but I still manage to fool them, especially the 9 YO, and they both love it. It’s never mean.

Some of the things I’ve told them over the years, including recently:

  • I have a degree from Magic School (this is very useful with smaller kids as you can then cure anything)
  • I invented many fruits. Starting with the pineapple, then watermelon and eventually my masterpiece: the banana
  • the tiny hatch in our bedroom ceiling (it’s for the electrics and ducting for the a/c) is the gateway to a secret living room that only DH and I use. It’s all decorated in pink with funky wallpaper and velvet sofas.
  • WiFi is named after its inventor, William Fillian (borrowed that from Twitter)
  • I also have a degree in Fire (bonfires, candles and such like)

What good lies have you told your kids? I’m not talking about the usual ice cream van bell stuff, but fun stuff that stimulates imagination and has ‘running gag’ potential.

Lockdown is boring! Let’s trick the kids 😁

OP posts:
Slightlyunhinged · 13/05/2020 03:31

I have a long scar running from my side across the middle of my back. It is actually from an operation, but I told my nephews and nieces that I got a job one summer as a shark wrangler in Cornwall and was bitten whilst wrestling a shark away from the beach. They are now grown up with children of their own and they love to tell them about Aunty Slightly and the sharks.

Topseyt · 13/05/2020 03:56

I was chief of that sort of thing when our children were young.

On top of the usual Father Christmas and the tooth fairy, I had a variety of fictional monsters which were meant to chase them into doing various tasks like getting ready for school or bed. It usually worked too.

I would tell tall stories too. I remember once winding three year old DD2 up when she had left a bottle of bubble blowing liquid out on the outdoor table during a big thunder storm. I told her that the storm would be inside it after that and would escape and restart the next time she opened it. She believed me too and it took my mother (staying with us as I had just given birth to DD3) some time to convince her and demonstrate that that wouldn't happen.

There were others, like telling them that the Eurostar trains dived off the White Cliffs of Dover and swam the English Channel instead of going into a tunnel underneath it.

Stelmariah · 13/05/2020 04:04

I don’t see how stuffing children’s heads with a bunch of silly lies will enhance and improve their childhoods.

Yeahnahmum · 13/05/2020 04:15

That's not lying that is just having a wonderful imagination and making up great things. Love it

foggybits · 13/05/2020 04:18

I don’t see how stuffing children’s heads with a bunch of silly lies will enhance and improve their childhoods.

🙄

Honeybee85 · 13/05/2020 04:18

'Mummy has a pain in her belly and needs to spend some time on the toilet'.

Actually

Mummy wants to be on Mumsnet - in peace - and the toilet is the perfect hiding place for that.

IgiveupallthenamesIwantedareg0 · 13/05/2020 04:21

I remember telling my younger sister, that if she put her finger in her tummy button and "unscrewed" it, her bottom would fall off ! She believed me and didn't touch her tummy button for weeks!

Topseyt · 13/05/2020 04:21

I don’t see how stuffing children’s heads with a bunch of silly lies will enhance and improve their childhoods

There's always one who takes it all way too seriously. 😂😂

PapayaCoconut · 13/05/2020 04:39

I know it sounds joyless and uptight but I actually don't think it's a good idea to habitually lie to children, especially when the objective is to scare them into doing what you want. What kind of message does that send?

And what was the point of this one?

I told her that the storm would be inside it after that and would escape and restart the next time she opened it. She believed me too and it took my mother (staying with us as I had just given birth to DD3) some time to convince her and demonstrate that that wouldn't happen.

Children get scared of some pretty weird things. Why would you add to that? And send the message that they can't really trust you to be straight with them as well? It sounds like it was just for your own entertainment.

HannaH021 · 13/05/2020 04:42

Lol when ur children find out the lies, there is going to be some serious truse issues Grin

nysnet · 13/05/2020 05:00

Tooth fairy, Santa Claus, Easter Bunny ect. - These are the stories that make childhood so magical. I don't have any trust issues with my parents over these...

NotAgainNo · 13/05/2020 05:00

But.. but...but they're "white lies", you know. Just "tall stories" that's all. Just "improving imagination". Just innocent brainwashing.

You wait till they start using that "well-improved imagination" on you. Hope you'll accept they aren't lying.

Yes it IS lying still. Was waiting for someone to say it isn't as always. Your reasons for lying can be anything from lighthearted to serious, doesn't matter.

Stelmariah · 13/05/2020 05:08

PapayaCoconut exactly what you said.
Needless to say that some children don’t enjoy being lied to. There were grown-ups around me as a child who told these kind of inane lies to us kids and it all came across as a desperate attempt to connect with us, get friendly and appear as fun. You can’t achieve it with stupid little lies that belittles the intelligence of children. These adults just want to have their own fun and they are more infantile than the kids they are trying to trick.

NotAgainNo · 13/05/2020 05:11

I don't have any trust issues with my parents over these

It's because this lie: "These are the stories that make childhood so magical" has been fed to everyone so it's become a widely accepted lie. There aren't many who have trust issues solely based on the widely accepted (and even expected) lies that we now call tradition.

FineWordsForAPorcupine · 13/05/2020 06:51

I'm afraid I'm with the "joyless" bunch - I honestly don't see what's so magical about it?

Convincing a child of something that isn't true is easy, because...well, they trust you and they don't have much experience of the world. You think it's magical, but to them it's normal - they are asked to believe all sorts of strange things that are true anyway, you adding on some extra ones is for your benefit, not theirs.

Some adults seem to enjoy it because they can then roll around with glee saying things like "oooh, do you remember when you were little, and you thought that ice cream came from cows in the North Pole?". Yeah, because you told me it did. I also believed you that oil was prehistoric sea creatures and that if I didn't brush my teeth they'd fall out, and both of them were true. I had no frame of reference. It's not part of the "magic" or "innocence" of childhood to believe things that turn out, with the benefit of adult knowledge, to be deliberately false.

megrichardson · 13/05/2020 06:53

I am afraid that I'm not keen on making up stories for children and passing them off as true, either.

Hibbetyhob · 13/05/2020 06:57

I’m another who doesn’t, really. I even feel guilty about FC.

We tell each other funny stories and use our imaginations lots but are always clear about what’s true and what isn’t.

I think that’s important for children.

Ifailed · 13/05/2020 07:03

It's one thing to threaten your kids with monsters to get them to obey you, it's another to make up stories to entertain them, as long as they know that a story is just a made up bit of fun. You can encourage them to make up their own stories, sometimes it can help them tell you something they haven't been able to before.

Mumdiva99 · 13/05/2020 07:04

I'm split between the two camps. I'm a pragmatist so just wouldn't think to tell my kids loads if lies. But, if you here the stuff my kids come out with in relation to their family if soft toys and the back stories they have, I think kids can work out what's real and what isn't. But they thrive off using their imagination. I wouldn't want to present untruths as fact, but you could say "what if ice cream came from cows at the north pole...." which opens up the imagination without making it 'real'.

LastNameChanger · 13/05/2020 07:05

It helps widen imagination and is completely harmless.
My dad used to read the TV guide and tell me ahead what would happen in the Simpson’s and insist he knew because he wrote that episode. I spent years believing him and thought it was amazing, no harm done, still find it funny.

SimonJT · 13/05/2020 07:05

I don’t lie to him, he needs to know he can trust me.

Mumdiva99 · 13/05/2020 07:06

....sorry for typos...loads of lies, hear not here, if not of....

Aroundtheworldin80moves · 13/05/2020 07:11

We don't make stuff often... But will admit to two.

  1. there's a photo of DH with a cheetah. He has a big scar on his leg... We claim it's his cheetah bite. Pretty sure they don't believe us.

  2. my 7yo is sort of under the impression at the moment if she doesn't do her home school work, she won't get to go into Yr3 in September with her friends. Feel a bit guilty about this, but her motivation is now improving.

FineWordsForAPorcupine · 13/05/2020 07:12

There's a difference between being imaginative and going into the child's world, with things like creative play that they are part of and contribute to - when I was a kid my brother and I pretended that the pylons were aliens and we had to hide from them on car journeys (we'd recently watched The Tripods) and we loved it when our mum would play along. That was the best. It was a game, we all understood that, and to this day I think there's something enjoyably sinister about a line of pylons, stalking across the fields towards me Grin

But if my mum had told me, say, that pylons carry different kinds of drinks and connect to different drinks taps, so when you go to a pub, my coke was coming straight out of the cola pylon, that would have been....not fun, because I'd have just accepted it. It would be fun for her because a) the reveal, when I finally realise its not true and HAHA you believed it, weren't you sweet as a little girl, you used to believe pylons had fizzy drinks HAHA and b) my mother gets to feel oh so imaginative and creative and isn't she making my childhood all magical.

But there's nothing more "magical" in thinking pylons carry drinks than there is in thinking they carry electricity. Its just that one isn't true. Its not a funny game to tell kids that WiFi is named after William Fillian nor is it an imaginative world they can contribute to. Its just you amusing yourself.

ConnieDoodle · 13/05/2020 07:12

You sound really tedious. Ive known adults in real life who love to lie. i find it incredibly frustrating.

But theres no harm from teaching your child they can’t trust a word you say. I can see no negative outcome from that at all...