We try to be as truthful to our kids as possible. Sometimes, however, those harmless little white lies sneak in. We justify that we use them for their own safety, but usually it’s for our own sanity.
Like the light switch lie. It drives us crazy when they turn them on and off, so we told them we get charged a quarter every time, and they would have to pay us back. They don’t want to empty their piggy banks, so they’re pretty careful now with the lights. We’ve also used this common one: if they cross their eyes and someone hits their back, their eyes will stay that way. I hate when they cross their eyes.
My mom used to tell me that if I swallowed watermelon seeds I would grow a watermelon in my belly. Every time I saw a pregnant woman I figured that’s what she was carrying. Watermelons we buy these days are mostly seedless, so that fun little lie can’t even be used today.
Here's a good one we did just for fun: While driving down the road, I would scan ahead to see if houses ahead had their garage doors open. I would then push our own garage door opener and tell the kids I was going to open that house's garage door. It took them a long time to figure that one out.
My favorite original lie we’ve used since my kids were little has helped keep peace in the car. Years ago, my son asked what that red triangle button on the dash was for, and I told him it was the eject button. I said we didn’t want to use it often because it’s very expensive to reset, but if the kids in the back seats got too noisy we could simply push the button, the roof would open, and the seats would fly right out. They were shocked. “Would you really do that?!”
We explained that driving a car requires concentration, and disruptive passengers can make it very dangerous. To this day, if they’re getting rowdy back there, all I have to do is make a motion toward the button and they shape up. Two of them are pretty sure the button is for something else, but they still change their behavior.
They don’t want to find out the hard way.
Gone Fishing
13 years ago
What a great post! I was laughing all the way through it - not that I've said any of those things!
ReplyDeleteI thought the one about the garage door opener was really creative. I'm going to remember it.
My brother and I used to use the watermelon seed story on my sister. Thing is that she didnt know what to do with her seeds because it looked like our pieces didn't have any seeds (we were swallowing them). My favorite is the eject button!
ReplyDeleteI got roped into the watermelon seed story, especially after being caught eating some dirt. (It was a dare and I was very young.) I refused to eat watermelon for the rest of that summer and never failed to remove all the seeds thereafter. My father used to say the white line on the edge of the road was a white rabbit running very fast. We could't see him when we weren't moving, but we could see his vapor trail.
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