The lies we tell our children...

[Flamesparrow]

"You have to have both sides of your hair tied up because otherwise you will be unbalanced and fall over lots"

lol..i read somewhere that you should tell your children the ice cream van tune is an 'alarm' to let everyone know they've run out..

If you dont stop playing with it, it will fall off

My mum used to tell me stuff for her own amusement I'm sure, she once told me that no, lifts in buildings don't take you up, instead the lift stays where it is and the building sinks into the ground. Also I used to point at houses a lot as we were out walking and ask "who lives there?" and she always said "the King of Gloucester Street" or "the Princess of Cumberland Avenue". I thought every street had a royal family!

Her favourite was
Me:"are we nearly there?"
Mum:"yes"
Me:"but you said we were nearly there last time and we're not there yet"
Mum:"well we're closer than when you last asked me

There's no answer to that is there?!

To DS age 11. I can't leave you here on your own as if the police find out they will take you away from me. Eek.

creme eggs/smarties/any check out confectionary are "only for grown ups". Also, whenever ds says "I want one of those" during ad breaks we say "Yes I want one too" he often replies " no thats not how you get things". Regularly fib that I'll come back into his bedroom/ bring him some more milk if he stays nice and quiet for a long time with his eyes closed.

My father used to tell me if i dont eat my veg my blood will become so thin that when i will cut myself it wont stop bleeding.

Passer by in the supermarket actually stopped me to say 'Madam, I think your nose is growing' when I was telling ds that there weren't any lollipops because there was a nationwide lollipop shortage and questions had been asked in the House of Commons and all.

Monsters will go away if you point them towards the door and shout: GO AWAY monster, you aren't allowed in the house, now go, shoo!

if a tantrum looks imminent(sp)..."wow, did you see that elephant, giraffe, purple monkey etc outside the window? no, oh nevermind you must have missed it"

at being asked where is nanny, daddy, grandad is "at work" ... he just seems to accept this more than any other answer??

Mummy knows best.

Oh yes, Fairyglo. Also 'Mummy's in charge'. I wish!

When ds takes his straps off in the car - "Quick, I can see a policeman!"

Smug alert.

I strongly disagree with lying to children. They're already having a hard job making sense of the world. Also, how long will you perpetuate these lies and don't you realise that as soon as they discover the first lie they won't trust you again.

Oh Spider that is a little bit smug. I trusted my mum even when I discovered she was winding me up sometimes! (Although she didn't let on the best one until I was grown up. Frustrated by my picky eating, for years she'd been using food dye on chicken soup red and telling me it was tomato. Just because she was sick of me only wanting 'red' soup!

Yep I knew you'd think it smug but I can't help it. I can't lie to my kids or anyone. I hate lying and lies.

I also hate other people lying to my kids and tell my kids 'No ... Uncle James is joking. It doesn't really blah blah blah'.

Whilst I'm riding the crest of a smug-fest I'd like to recomend \link{http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0099727404/qid=1147008166/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/202-0565193-3141413\The Road Less Travelled} to anyone who wonders why anyone interested in why truth is always the best path.

But isn't lying a necessary skill? Obviously types of lies are harmful, but there are so many social situations where lying is the only way to avoid hurting peoples' feelings. A well placed lie can smooth over an awkward situation (the "music means the van has run out of ice-cream" lie must have headed off loads of tantrums).

I was told by my mum when i was little that if I kept fiddling with my belly button it would come undone, I actually believed her for many years, and now cant stand anything going near it lol.

It's storing up problems for later bran. It's lazy parenting. We should be brave enough to tell our kids why they're not getting an ice cream from the van.

They'll lie back to you in their teens, mark my words. Trust goes both ways.

I agree with Spidermama - I don't like lying and will be glad when they no longer believe in Father Christmas.

Thank God Pollyanna. I thought I'd be a lone voice on this one. I agree about FC. I remember learning it was all a big lie and it led to a crisis of trust between my parents and me.

my dh wouldn't let me disabuse them of the FC myth, but I do feel uncomfortable perpetuating it!

Me too. I try to keep it vague and tongue in cheek. My 7 year old and my 6 year old know the truth because they asked me directly and I wasn't prepared to abuse their trust.

so spidermama do santa and the easter bunny/ tooth fairy not exist in your house?
thosew were someof the best things about being a child for me..I even pretended to believe for ages after I realised..lol

i think it's not lying..just feeding their imaginations!

and if you can say something that calms down a hysterical child at 2am then why is that wrong!?

we don't do the Easter bunny in our house (I put my foot down on that one), and I don't do the tooth fairy - dh insists on that one but I don't reinforce it in anyway.

well..for our ds we will 'do' santa and easter bunny..i have some reservations as we are not religious and hate the hysteria/marketing/ nonesense of xmas/easter for people that don't even believe in it..
purely for the reason we don't want him to feel he's missing out at school..and a little because a lot of my family is religious,

as for the tooth fairy..thats fine by me! many children feel about losing a tooth like they do about a hair cut..that they are losing part of themselves..and I don't see the problem of offering them an incentive to just deal with it..

I think the "innocent" childhood lies like Father X-mas and the toothfairy might or might not cause a trust issue. I wasn't bothered when I was told, but my brother was heartbroken. I have always told my children that they are not real/dressed up grown ups, so we can still join in the cultural activities as it were. My son asked me recently, when one of his teeth came out: Mummy, were you the toothfairy? and I just said yes. Sometimes I wonder if I am not taking the lying issue a bit too seriously though, they seem to want to believe in santa, fairies in our garden etc, and then I come in and crush their little fantasy... O yes, one of my favourite sayings is that they (whatever it is) (only) exist in our imagination.
And err, I don't think i can be certain I never tell them any fibs, I probably do for convenience, like (nearly) everybody else.