To ask what lies do you tell your children?

[RevolutionofourTime]

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 😁

@Rhodri 🙁

@harper30 thanks, I’ll think about it

I don't get the point of it. How is making stuff up that you pass on as truth stimulating their imagination? It's never occurred to me to do this and just seems really forced.

There's a huge leap from encouraging imaginative play & games, where kids are in on it & sharing in the agency around it and trying to get one over on them as an adult.

This indeed. We went for a walk on Saturday and my 4 year old was telling us all about the dinosaurs he could see round each corner and saying dandelions were dino-nettles. Then he brought in a bit about a cyclops and some volcanoes and we were both involved in this and following his lead. He doesn't need us making up shit about inventing fruit to have his own imaginative play.

Maybe a better example is this. DS recently listened to a story about the faerie thorn tree and the faeries who steal children. At bedtime he said he was scared of the faeries. He wasnt really, he knew it was a story but he was stalling bedtime. DH told him he had painted the whole house with anti-faerie paint and of any tried to come in they just bounced off. That it was the best quality anti-faerie paint and he touched it up regularly so there were no gaps.

DS knew that wasnt really true but it was joining in with the story he was extrapolating himself from the story he had heard. So it was making something up by following his lead.

It's the randomly making something up without it having any reference to anything else and presenting it as fact that seems so odd to me. Not necessarily damaging as some other posters have suggested just weird and pointless.

Whenever I told the kids a tall tale when they were young I never got away with it. Apparently I have a "lie face"

DS recently listened to a story about the faerie thorn tree and the faeries who steal children. At bedtime he said he was scared of the faeries. DH told him he had painted the whole house with anti-faerie paint and of any tried to come in they just bounced off. That it was the best quality anti-faerie paint and he touched it up regularly so there were no gaps

To me, this lovely.

Surely with the “You’re such a good singer” examples there are levels though? I am an absolutely terrible singer and had my mum told me that frankly at 8/9 I’d have been devastated. Instead she told me similar to a PPs mum, that my singing was fine but perhaps my particular talent lay elsewhere so I might want to pick another part to try for in the school play. I got the message and it was far kinder than brutal honesty at that age.

With my kids, we have Santa, the tooth fairy etc and a couple of family jokes. I try to not make it anything that could potentially embarrass them at school and when DS1 asked me outright at 4 if the tooth fairy was real I was honest with him.

I used to do certain things with dd when very little. The park was tired or asleep. She was rigid with food. Even different pasta shapes was an issue so I made up stories about the food to encourage her to try new stuff. I also told her dh and I were in our 20’s. (I wish]

As she got a little older, I could see she didn’t really like it and saw any silly five as straight out lying. I also didn’t like to be lied to as a child. It made me feel small and stupid. Then I saw dd squirming and see she felt the same.

I think the difference between opposing views is that different people like different things. Some love an imaginary world. Others do not. My dd hates Harry Potter stories for some unknown reason.

To me, this lovely I thought so too! Because it was a kind and imaginative way to allay a child's fears (although I do think it was mostly just stalling bedtime rather than genuine fear) as opposed to randomly making something up designed to cause confusion or fear.

Previous posters have made a good point - if a child is in on the lie and clearly knows it's a joke/imaginative play then that is absolutely fine and encourages imagination and creativity. If they honestly believe you when you then that's not imaginative for them because they think it's true. There's also a big difference between a joke which is short-term and ends in you telling them it's not true (e.g. an April Fool where they find out pretty quickly that it was just a joke) and something that carries on over a long period of time until the child finally finds out it's not true of their own accord months or years down the line and feels like they were tricked.

Just leaving this here

foggybits I wouldn’t tell them they were an amazing singer if it wasn’t true! Nor would I tell them they were shit. I’d say something like ‘I love the way you’re enjoying the song’ or ‘you’re great at remembering the words’ or something else positive.

DS is shit at handwriting. I don’t tell him it’s crap. I praise his effort and praise when he forms a letter well. Nor do I tell him his handwriting is beautiful. It isn’t (he is a lot older than most kids who are learning to form letters but even if he were five I wouldn’t say it if it was a lie).

I'm another who is not comfortable with lying to children and don't believe that it's "magical".

However, it's perfectly fine to create an imaginary world, such as in fairy stories, and play imaginary games with children. For example, I have a fairy door on one of the trees in my garden and my grandchildren enjoy playing games imagining what the fairy house looks like inside and collecting little things to leave on the fairy doorstep as gifts. They know it's not real, but it's a fun game to play.

With my own DCs, the same applied to father Christmas - he was an imaginary fairytale type person and it was fun to leave out carrots for the reindeer etc. But it was a game, I never tried to convince them it was real and true. Why would I?

On the other hand, lies to manipulate (scare) children into doing things they don't want to do are not okay. I feel very uncomfortable hearing Father Christmas used as a blackmail/behaviour control technique. In our house, Father Christmas visits but he's not attached to good behaviour, and we certainly wouldn't 'tell Father Christmas' about naughty behaviour. etc. The concept of Elf on the Shelf as a little spy in your house for a month does not sit right with me either 🙄

When I was a kid we didn't have e
Elf on the Shelf, but my parents had a polar bear, a mouse with a hat, and a reindeer toy, and all 3 would appear in my bedroom on the 1st December. I loved them. They were supposedly "spies" for Father Christmas. They are one of my fondest memories of my childhood Christmases, and I think of them as tradition now. My parents gave the toys to me and now I do the the exact same with my own DD.

And yes I really did believe in Father Christmas. My brother and me would stay up late trying to sneak a peek at him - I once slept a little toy fishing net to try and catch the tooth fairy no harm done.

When she was 2 DD became terrified of monsters (my twat of a SIL showed her star trek/Dr who while babysitting). She would have nightmares, wet herself, wouldn't go to bed etc. No matter how much we said monsters weren't real. I eventually told her cats are ace monster hunters, that's why we have them as pets, that's why they sleep on her bed - to keep her safe. Now 5 she has developed a huge narrative about cats and their capabilities and writes stories about it. She will find out it's not real eventually, I feel guilty for lying, but to help a very distressed child it was worth it.

TotallyKerplunked I agree. My DD used to have what she called "bad thoughts" (she told me that she was terrified of dying and it used to scare her every night but she didn't want to keep saying the dying word so renamed it that). We tried all sorts of techniques eg blowing up an imaginary balloon with the thoughts inside and popping it clean away but in the end we bought a dream catcher and we would shake it out the window to clear all the thoughts away. She still has it above her bed years later now.

A couple of others I remembered are that we would tell her that the lonely bit of food wanted to play with his friends in her tummy so that she'd eat her veggies up. Also she wouldn't go for a wee before going out resulting in desperately needing to find a loo whilst out so I would go and tell her that my wee-wees wanted to talk to her wee-wees and she'd go before we'd leave the house or before bed or whenever I needed her to try.

I still jokingly say about the lonely bit of broccoli or whatever now and she grimaces and says "muuuummmm" but pops it into her mouth as I still think she can't bear to leave it out of the tummy playing other food in there

I told the children that fossils were just fancy stones and people had made up dinosaurs.

Any sweetie wrappers in the car were litter I had picked up to put in the bin

All models made from festering yogurt pots, loo rolls tubes and eggboxes brought home from nursery had to stay in the car to dry, and somehow they got stolen from the car on the drive, right next to the bin

Other lies
sweetcorn is yummy, green peas are not, so I only buy the green sweetcorn that was packaged as peas by mistake

cauliflower is a smart version of white broccoli

salmon is not fish, it's pink chicken.

Phish food icecream is spicy, and not for children.

Tooth fairies are afraid of cats, so were waiting for the cats to be properly asleep before they left money for teeth.

My niece tells her children that ice cream van's chimes are to let people know he's run out of ice cream.

“ Child: mummy did you like my song?
Mum: oh darling don't you know that if you keep singing songs, the music goblin will creep up to you next time it rains and steal your soul?? So it's best if you don't sing.
Child: confused”

That’s just creepy and shit

I told the children that fossils were just fancy stones and people had made up dinosaurs.
Why???

All models made from festering yogurt pots, loo rolls tubes and eggboxes brought home from nursery had to stay in the car to dry, and somehow they got stolen from the car on the drive, right next to the bin

You can't be serious. So now they think that thieves break into their car all the time? Do the thieves break into the house too? Are they scared of the dark, by any chance?

(Your children, that is. Given that they're being burgled regularly.)