Tell me, Count Olaf, the lies you've told your children - chance to win £300 voucher NOW CLOSED

[CountOlaf]

My dear MNers,

It is I, Count Olaf. Those fools charming fellows at MNHQ have temporarily allowed me to take the reins, and while I have them, I propose that - rather than your usual milksop fare (driveway parking, houmous, and whatnot) - we discuss something rather more meaty.

I want you to tell me the terrible lies you have told your DCs.

By 'lie' I mean, of course, an intentionally false statement - rather like the fiendish zinger I have (thus far) got away with telling those wretched Baudelaire orphans, following the tragic (boo hoo ) death of their darling Ps: that is, that I have their very best interests at heart, and certainly did not become their guardian with the sole intention of getting my hands on their sizeable inheritance. To which end, I have, as some of you may already be aware, developed a suite of cunning disguises to prevent them from wriggling from my grasp.

So do tell - what are the magnificent lies you have told your DCs. Maybe you've told them a single bed has plenty of room for 3 DCs to share? Or that rocks are toys? Share your devious methods below and I will reward one of you with a £300 voucher...but only one of you, of course: life isn’t fair!

Yours ingeniously,

Count Olaf

Standard Insight T&Cs Apply

We put the clocks back by at least an hour on Xmas Eve and told the children they could bring their stockings in to us at 7 o'clock. That way, we usually got to sleep until 8am!

Worked for a number of years and once they were savvy enough to realise, they were old enough to understand to wait until 8!

I tell my 3 year old and 5 year old boys that rules are made by the queen and we simply must follow them. For instance, bedtime? Queen. Eat all your veg? Yep Queen says so. Telly off? Yep the Queen again. You see I find that this way the Queen gets the grief and the kids can't challenge her because well, she's royal. Note that if you need evidence of said Queen she can be found on the latest Minion movie. Your welcome

I swore I would never lie to my child but that was before I had him!

He's an extremely fussy but loves fish. So far he's happily eaten chicken fish and sausage fish. He won't eat eggs but does eat 'special bread' eg. eggy bread.

Lots of things in shops aren't for sale.

This one will backfire on me - anything I don't want him to drink (fizzy drinks, juice, etc.) is beer and chocolate is medicine.

Sometimes the TV runs out of batteries and we have to charge it before it can go on again. Likewise, most electronic things have a very short battery and mysteriously go flat at just about the time that I have got sick of the irritating, tinny music.

'No, there's no chocolate / sweets / crisps / cakes etc... in the house'

'Sorry, we don't have enough pennies to buy XYZ...' (ie. a 20p curly wurly)

'Yes, Nanna / Grandad can hear you and know if you're being good or not' (they live miles away but DC seem to want to be extra well behaved for them!)

When DD was going through a difficult and picky eater stage, she refused to eat any type of potato. Not baked, Not roast, Not chips, Not mash. which made giving her meals with substance quite difficult.

So a couple of days after explaining what vaccinations were as she had expressed an interest into why I was allowing someone to poke her with needles. I came up with an ingenious lie.

Mash potato was in fact....monster mash. The little black specs in Mash potato, that you and I know as black pepper, were small bits of dried monster. When she ate the mash, it would make her smell like monster and then monsters wouldn't come and bother her at night because why would they bother another monster? The clincher for her was that someone had written a song about it, so therefore it must be true.

I now have a child who eats potato and isn't scared of monsters...double whammy :D

Unicorns once existed bit died out due to Evolution, lost their horns and evolved into horses!

That my chocolate is mummy's medicine.

Overnight the soft-play area turns into a pub full of mucky beer. If we leave too late they'll make her drink some and it is absolutely disgusting.

The scampi we buy in supermarket unfortunately has chilli in, so DD has to eat fish fingers and her dad and I eat her share...

Pub scampi is for some inexplicable reason free of chilli

That the man at the bank can see what they are up to. If they are naughty he takes money out. Then there's no toys or treats.

Chocolate orange is avocado. The Grinch lives in the water board service bit thingy down the road from us. Yes all children go to bed at 7pm, it's the law.

If I'm eating anything I don't want him to have I say it has raisins in it.

My daughter who is 4 has all the excuses of not wanting to go to bed at her given time of 7 pm. So I set my phone with an alarm which rings promptly at bedtime saying Mr So and So her headteacher at school is calling to check that she is in bed. This, of course, gets her her bum into gear and up she goes with a change of attitude. works wonders.

That they have to go to after school every day as I don't finish work in time to get them.
In reality I go food shopping in peace once a week, then come home unpack. eat a cake and Mumsnet for an hour before collecting them. It's bliss and well worth the £20 after school fee.

I told my then 2 year old that the carrot fairy would come on his third birthday because "when you are 3, you like carrots." He has always been incredibly sensitive to taste but I was desperate for him to eat just one vegetable....
He went to bed and the carrot fairy duly visited. He was so happy the next morning and started munching on the raw carrots straight away.
He is now nearly 8 and will still only eat raw carrots and, occasionally, raw pepper. He also reminisces about the carrot fairy.... I'm never going to tell him- he'll work it out at some point.... and hopefully he won't have scurvy!

When the DC were very young we "accidentally" revealed to them the existence of the Rudest Word In The World...the "F" word...brace yourself..."fitbin" .

Whenever there was discussion of adults using rude words they asked us in hushed whispers whether the cross man had said anything as rude as f.i.t.b.i.n. (Stifled giggles at their own audacity) and we reassured them that, no, the naughty man hadn't said anything quite as terrible as that.

When watching Frozen with my three year old, she asked what had happened to Anna and Elsa's mummy and daddy and why Anna and Elsa were so sad. Not wanting to tell her that their parents had perished at sea leaving Elsa the responsibility of ruling the kingdom alone, while the lovely Anna was left to a life of dreary loneliness in a cold and unfriendly home, I told her that their parents had gone on a sailing trip around the world and were away so long Elsa had to become Queen. She replied, "just like grandma and Papa?" She now believes the King and Queen of Arendale are on a round the world cruise.

I told DD that I have eyes in the back of my head, and she seems to have taken it literally.

She has even confessed to a few things that I kew nothing about and added "your other eyes probably saw me do it, didn't they?"

Plus the usual Santa and Tooth Fairy, but I don't really see that as proper lying.

My Dd doesn't like onions. When she suspiciously eyes a chunk of onion in her dinner and asks what it is, I tell her "vegetables".

She then happily eats it.

In honour of the late great Sir Terry Wogan
It's all chicken...(lamb, beef, fish etc)
Salmon is princess fish...

That they can't do / eat something now but can do something in the morning in the hope they have forgotten by then.

That there's no xxxxx left for them to eat.

That Mummy and Daddy both have poorly legs so can't lie on the floor and play doctors again.

Lied about the food on the plate, called every piece of meat ham in a bid to get them to eat it. Told them Father Christmas was watching, left notes from the Elf telling them to behave or Christmas would be cancelled - as if!
Denied eating their chocolate! Topped up their drink with water when they though that they were getting pure lemonade....... the list goes on!!!

Telling them that it is bedtime when it really is not!!!

That I used to be a model and I was the dark haired woman on the back of Meatloaf Bat out of Hell album cover (the one he had his hand on her butt) and also the woman on Boz Scaggs album cover (the one where he has his hand draped over a park bench.
Oh, I also told them that Axyl Rose from Guns 'n Roses was their dad and Sweet Child of Mine was written for them. My DH did nothing to discount these outrageous suggestions.
They are happy young adults now and not upset, they laugh about it.

I feel a bit shit writing it down though, WTF was I thinking?

Please don't judge me when I tell you this. We have told my 4 year old son that he has a twin called Spider-Joe who lives in a cage up in the loft. He eats fish heads and eyeballs. The reason he is up there is for my sons own safety as he tried to bite off his nose when they were babies. We told him this one tea time as he had been so naughty we said we would have to swap him with Spider-Joe. He happened to glance at the fridge where there is a magnet of my son as a baby wearing a romper suit with a spider on. He asked if that was Spider-Joe and we said yes. We have told him that Spider-Joe isn't real but he does crop up from time to time lol No wonder I have crazy and slightly sarcastic kids. But both kids have great sense of humour and are great story tellers. When I was a kid my Dad you to tell me that my Mum use to take him down the bottom of the garden and hit him over the head with a piece of wood. It really must be a family thing to tell such crazy lies, or are they??? heehee