The other day I was walking my dog down the street, and a little boy--maybe three years old--ran up to ask if he could pet her. He explained to me how much he loved dogs, and how he had had a dog, but it had "gone to live on a farm."
Oh wow--do parents still really tell their kids that?
He went on to tell me about how it was a really nice farm, with flying goats and singing horses and such. His parents had really told him a heck of a whopper.
I suppose people think it's the kind thing to do, lying to your kids when you don't want them to be disturbed. But I've never been able to do it. I was never even able to tell my child that there was a Santa Claus. It's not that I have anything against Santa. In fact, before I became a mom, I always thought it was a pretty story that I would go ahead and pass on to my kids.
But when the time came, I couldn't do it. Because, you know, it would just be an out-and-out lie.
Still, once she went off to school, my daughter found out about Santa anyway. And then she believed with a vengeance. That first Christmas after kindergarten she insisted on leaving cookies by the fireplace and hanging up her stocking, which she earnestly informed me would be filled by morning.
And then she trotted off to bed.
So there we were, hurriedly filling her stocking in the kitchen after hours, with me worrying about whether I really had to continue the charade the next day about where those presents had come from and feeling like just a complete fraud and a liar.
And then, abruptly, my daughter appeared again. She had heard something and had gotten out of bed.
"Mom," she said accusingly. "Is that my stocking?"
Doh!
I stammered out something about how I was just looking at it.
"Put it back!" she said imperiously. "That's for Santa!"
And she stood there and watched me suspiciously until I had put the empty stocking back on the fireplace again. And then and only then did she agree--still suspiciously!--to go back to bed.
Clearly I wasn't to be trusted.
So much for not lying. You can't win.
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2 comments:
You know, I'm kind of the opposite. Despite believing that parents claiming one kind of lie is better than another (don't lie to me, but I can lie to you), there is somenting to the wonderment of imagination and willful disregard for rationality that makes them (moreso than us?) fabulous little humans. My daughter doesn't care that there never has been a Lorax, and I can't bring myself to tell her that a peach could never grow big enough to climb inside and sail the oceans.
I do think certain "permissable" lies should be avoided, if only because they feed into materialistic thinking (and Santa does come close), but in the world of a (in my case) three year old she decides who does or does not exist.
Mike
I told my sons that while the story of Santa may have been based on the actions of a real person at one time, today Santa is more of a spirit that fills people who believe in him at this time of year. Regardless at my attempt at being truthful, my older boys (8 and 4) still wake up looking for the eaten carrots (we leave them for the reindeer), cookie crumbs, and big ashy boot prints on our hearth. One year they even left Santa cheese because they felt he must be tired of cookies by now...Don't even get me started about the tooth fairy! (My son declared that his tooth fairy is a boy and now 'Fanglin' the fairy leaves him scrolls with small stories written on them about his life as a tooth fairy! The lengths we go to as parents...maybe we do it because we secretly believe a little too!
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