I'm happy to report that so far all of Danielle's caterpillars are still alive and are growing very quickly. It's almost as amazing as the tv commercial promised. This picture is from yesterday. They're even bigger today.I saw this article on MSNBC today about lying to your children. I had a hard time around Christmas dealing with the whole Santa thing because I was afraid our kids would feel like they couldn't trust us if they found out we lied about something so important to them at this stage of their lives. But, the day after Christmas I put that out of my mind for another 11 months. I didn't think the article really said much, but it reminded me of Santa about 4 months too early. Fortunately Tyler hasn't asked about the Tooth Fairy yet.
In general I think we're pretty honest with our kids. I know we try to be. After I read the article I tried to think of times we tell our kids something that's untrue (it's hard to admit to lying). I thought of two examples, but I'm sure there are others. When Ron picks up dinner for us on the way home from work sometimes, he will occasionally get the order wrong or forget something. In order to cover for him and avoid a complete meltdown, we usually just tell the kids the restaurant was out of it that day. It defers their frustration to the non-present restaurant and we are able to move on with the rest of our dinner. I guess it comes down to trying to make our lives a little easier, just for a moment. (I simply do not have the energy to handle the whining and fit throwing all the time.) The other example is when Danielle does her own hair. She will brush just the front (because she can't reach all of the back) and then stick a headband on. Most of the time her hair is all over the place and, quite honestly, it looks pretty bad. Then she proudly asks me if her hair looks nice. How could I say anything but yes?
I feel kind of bad admiting to these things and putting them in writing. Lying (or not lying) seems so black and white, but it's not always. I'm sure my mom wasn't always truthful with me. How could you really be totally, completely honest with your kids every day all day long?? It would have been helpful to me if Jesus had been a married father to a four and six year old. I wonder how He would have dealt with dinner time meltdowns and hideous hairdos after spending a hard day healing leppers and multiplying loaves of bread.
2 comments:
None of us likes to be lied to when it is hurtful but we all like to hear things like "your hair looks nice."
My mother found a stray dog once and let it into the house. As kids who were dying to have a pet, we immediately fell in love with it. Unfortunately, the dog did not like my father and expressed his dislike by growling and barking every evening when Dad came home. Eventually, Mom had to get rid of the dog. What she told us was the dog had belonged to a little boy who was sick and the family was happy to have the dog back. It was a feel good lie--and saved all the whining and crying.
Many years later as a young adult, Mom let it slip that the dog went to the pound. There was no sick little boy. I was shocked. It was quite a whopper and my parents were ones who always said, "I won't punish as long as you don't lie to me."
As I see it, Mom loved and cared for us enough to know how much it would hurt to part with the dog. We were too young at the time to understand all the ramifications--especially if Dad had lost a chunk of flesh to the dog. I'm amazed the truth took so long to come out but grateful that I had that story of the sick boy to feel good about when I missed the dog.
No one wants to hear absolute truth when it hurts their feelings or causes pain. There are ways to deliver it that may seem like lying though. It's a tough call.
As for Jesus, he told stories--parables. He made up people (kind of like a fiction writer)for his stories so that he could teach truths. Maybe that's the role Santa could take--a made-up person to teach us that at Christmas it's all about giving and the greatest love-gift was the baby God gave.
I thought the article was right - that for little kids too much information can be a big problem. I'm sure we've told a few white lies lately...like that the toilet is thirsty for peepee...
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