Hey, parenting is hard. A little, white lie every now and again can't hurt, especially if it gives these overworked parents a well-deserved break.
Do You Want Your Dad To Go To Jail?
“I use this often with my two younger children: It’s illegal. I’ll get arrested if I did that.
It works for a lot of things: ‘Daddy, can I have ice cream for breakfast?’ No. It’s illegal. I’ll get arrested.
‘Daddy, can I watch TV?’ Not right now. It’s too early in the morning. It’s illegal. I’ll get arrested” (Source)
Where Wind Is Made
“This is one I overheard some 20 years ago when my wife and I stopped at the beach in Holland to take a breather. You could see windmills in the far distance.
A Brit and his very small child were standing next to us. He pointed at the windmills and, in his best Oxford English, he said, ‘Look son. They’re making wind'” (Source)
A Little Known Fact
“That the VCR doesn’t work when the sun’s out. It started when he was around three. I wanted him to play outside or do more creative things. I think it started when I had rearranged the family room and the VCR was unplugged, but I told him it was because the sun was out (Hey, we live in Washington, the sun is like a miracle). He believed it until he was at a friend’s and explained that the sun is out so they can’t watch a video. He was 10” (Source)
Noses To Spare
“I always keep my pockets full of ‘extra noses’ if someone wants to take one of my son’s. He hates the ‘Got Your Nose’ game, but people insist on playing it with him. So, to calm him down, I make sure I always have extras, just for him” (Source)
Mountain Men
“If you plant a pebble in the soil, you can grow a mountain, but you have to water it daily. Yes, pebbles are mountains seeds. And as a mountain is very big, they grow very fast, you’ll have to watch your pebble carefully, so you can see your mountain grow. That should give you enough free time for a proper coffee. Don’t plant mountains too close to your house, that could be a problem” (Source)
Quite The Unusual Talent
“I convinced my kids that I could eat a grape and make it re-emerge from my belly button.
It was simple misdirection. I would hold up a grape before their eyes. While their eyes were on that grape, I would slip another one under my shirt and into my navel with my other hand.
Then I’d eat the first grape and lift up my shirt to show them the second, lodged in my navel. This gave them endless delight every time I did it.
As far as I know, there was no time they specifically figured out how I did the simple trick, but once they were a bit older, I recall reminiscences when they would say, ‘Remember when Daddy used to make us think he could eat grapes and make them come out his belly button?'” (Source)
Frogs Beware
“My eldest daughter was five or six when we were driving through thick fog. I reached out to turn on the fog lights and she said, ‘What did you just do, Daddy?’ I replied that I’d turned on the fog lights and she obviously misheard. ‘Daddy what are frog lights for?’
Ha! An opening if ever there was one…! ‘Well love, in foggy weather, frogs often get a bit lost cos they can’t see where they’re going and they end up trying to find a road to make it easier for them to find their way. So we’ve got lights on the car that shine down on the road so I can see the frogs and avoid squishing them.’
‘Oh, don’t squish any poor froggies.’
‘I won’t, that’s why I put the frog lights on.’
She was maybe eight when we were once again driving along through some misty weather. ‘Dad quick!’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Put the frog lights on before any get squished.’ I had to pull over for a few minutes until I could stop laughing” (Source)
Everybody’s Allergic
“I feel pretty bad about this one, but not THAT bad.
It started so innocently. This is when people were allowed to smoke in designated areas of restaurants. I would tell the people seating us that we could not be near ANY smokers or any type of cigarette or other smoke because my baby daughter was allergic to cigarette smoke and could die right then and there.
I just hated smoke smell on my children and I thought it was deplorable that they were exposed to it in public places.
She loved ‘being allergic’ to something, so when she was age two and wanted chocolate or candy, I’d reply, ‘Sorry, no honey, you’re allergic.’
‘Can I drink pop (soda)?’
‘No honey, you’re allergic. How about some yummy milk or juice?’
‘Can I touch this knife?’
‘No honey, you’re allergic to knives. Please give it to mommy.’
This went on the whole time they lived at home, though I admit in high school it got funny.
‘Can we watch this scary movie tonight?’
‘No honey. We’re all allergic to scary movies. The whole family….allergic.’
I did this with all my 3 children. My daughter called me a few years ago and said that she ate some chocolate and that ‘nothing happened.’
OOPS.
But basically it worked. One child never did eat sweets as an adult, the other barely eats any, and my daughter just has a few bites of sweets here and there.
They have beautiful teeth, too” (Source)
A Bright Idea
“My first child believes that our having a second child was her idea.
Soon after I found out that I was pregnant with our second, I bought a bunch of books for our 3-year-old about what it means to be a big sister. We read the books for a few days, and then she told me that she had decided that she wanted to have a baby sister. I told her that if we were going to have another baby, we wouldn’t be able to decide if we wanted a girl or a boy. I also explained that it would sometimes mean that I would have to take care of the baby, and might not always be able to play with her. We talked about it for a while, about her having a sibling to play with, to teach things to, but that it would also be a lot of work for all of us. Babies cry a lot, I said. She decided that all of that was ok – and she really wanted a baby sister or a baby brother. I told her I would see what I could do.
A few days later I told her I was pregnant. She was thrilled, and has always felt that the baby was ‘her’ baby. She continues to take wonderful care of him (she is now 6, he is 3)” (Source)
Magical Mum
“When they were fairly small, I told my kids I had magical powers over traffic lights.
Sometimes we’d be sitting at the lights, and they’d say, ‘Come on, mummy, make them change!’ (The secret is that you can see the shadow of the other traffic lights in the other stream of traffic tinge to orange, then red).
So if that other traffic light was still on green, I’d say, ‘Oh no, I’m sure they’ll change on their own in a bit,’ and just stall a little bit, making them want to see me use my magic even more!
Some of the lights I knew how many seconds they would be on red, having counted that previously.
When the time was near to the lights changing, or when I saw the other lights’ glow going orange, I’d say, ‘Oh alright then!’ Then I’d screw up my eyes like I was concentrating and do a movement of the hand. Then our lights would change to green and my kids would think I’d magicked them green! I even tricked some of their friends too. It worked best if there was a longish wait on the lights.
I think they liked the thought of having a mum who could do magic, even though it was a very specific kind of magic!
They worked it out eventually when they were a bit older” (Source)
Visiting Toy Friends
“Toy Story is real.
I was in Toys R Us one day looking for kid furniture. I handed my daughter a Cookie Monster doll to keep her quiet while I shopped. She was about two at the time. When it was time to go I said something along the lines of, ‘Okay, we have to take him back to Sesame Street or else his friends will be lonely.’ She ran with it. She talked about the toys missing Woody and Buzz.
‘Yep. Just like that.’
She put the toy back on the shelf, told him goodbye, and blew him a kiss. A few days later, she asked if we could go visit ‘the store where the toys live.’ It turned into an incentive.
‘If you eat all your vegetables, I’ll let you visit the toys in Target tomorrow.’
Before long, it became routine for us to spend 5–10 minutes in the toy section of a store after she ‘did a good job being patient’ while I shopped. She’s six now. Even though she knows the truth, it’s still ingrained in her to not ask for anything (knock on wood). She asks if we can look at the toys for five minutes or play with the video game displays” (Source)
A Deep Betrayal
“That our internet service was really crappy late in the evening.
I can’t tell you how many times kids would be playing a computer game as bedtime approached and suddenly, bam! The internet would go out. They were frustrated. I was frustrated. But since it was close to bedtime, they might as well go up and start getting ready for bed.
The truth was that I’d configured the router to shut down access to their computer around bedtime. The exact time varied by a few minutes each day of the week, but was always between 9 and 9:30 (or something like that – I don’t recall the exact time).
Since they weren’t on the computer every day, they didn’t realize that access shut down each day. And if they happened to be playing for a few days straight, they didn’t get suspicious because it happened at different times each day. They never noticed that it was the same time on a given day of the week.
I don’t think I told them until they were adults” (Source)
Peas And Thank You
“I told a completely accidental lie, which I have chosen not to correct.
My nephew had received a bunch of candy as part of a gift, and I had decided to dole it out to him a piece or two a day, instead of letting a two year old eat a whole bucket of candy and make himself sick. He wasn’t thrilled with this system, and would always ask me for a piece of candy every time we were in the kitchen, because I kept it on top of the fridge.
When I was making dinner one day, he kept asking me for candy as I was pulling a bag of frozen peas out of the fridge. I though that he wanted the actual candy, but he had somehow decided the frozen peas were candy. I went with it, and gave him some, assuming he would be disgusted. He wasn’t. He loved them.
He is now nearly three, and still begs me for a little bowl full of ‘candy.’ I give him some frozen peas and tell him that’s his candy for the day, and he feels proud that he managed to talk me into giving him candy almost every day” (Source)
The Ultimate Power
“I convinced my son that I have a time portal. I can speed up or slow down time. It started one day when my son was really droopy in the morning and didn’t want to go to school because he thought it would take too long and be boring. I knew they were having a surprise pizza party for the kids because they had worked so hard the weeks before. So I told him I would activate my time portal and make the day shorter for him.
After school, he was amazed. The day was shorter! All they did was read and have a pizza party and watch a movie and then it was time to go home! Can I use it everyday?? I explained that with great power comes great responsibility. There is a balance to things, so unfortunately when I use my time portal to make a day shorter, it springs back and I have to make a different day longer so time doesn’t change.
Sure enough, the next day felt long. Legend cemented. Every time his day feels short or long, I confirm that was my time portal when he asks. Yup, totally convinced him I control time” (Source)
No Taxation Without Dad Representation
“Dad Tax. Ever since they were little, a small percentage (roughly 10%) of any treat, chocolate bar, chips, candy floss etc, must be given to the Dad unless it’s your birthday. There was no tax on vegetables but a higher tax on bacon…They finally caught on when one of them turned 14 and said hey there is no such thing. With three kids (they are all adults now), it is still collectable with a smile. I have no regrets.
The other one was when my son was about 8 and he asked, ‘Dad have you ever been in the army?’
I said, ‘Yes,’ with a straight face, ‘The Salvation Army.’ A few years later, he asked me if the Salvation Army had tanks” (Source)
The “Eyes” Have It
“My best lie–and the one that is still very much in effect even today!–is I continue to tell my now-teenage children that I can always determine when they are lying by merely gazing into their eyes–which is actually true to some extent but still technically a lie. When my children were young, they believed me emphatically because of its unvarying accuracy (although, obviously, it was their own behavior that gave them away when I would tell them to ‘look me directly in the eye!’).
As they grew older and a bit more skeptical, I could only use this ‘power’ when I was reasonably assured of its success, but it was still accurate enough (from both behavioral clues as well as other information they might not know I had in my possession) to be respected and draw out the truth when a lie was afoot.
As for today, my high schoolers pretty much know the truth–that their Dad does not have secret mental superpowers–but I keep up the pretense and still tell them to ‘look me in the eye’ when I call them on a bluff and the like. Sometimes they still give themselves away, and other times they hide well their deception (even when I know differently because of other information), but often they just ‘clarify their misstatement’ more out of respect (or so I would like to believe) and perhaps some degree of fear for my ‘other unknown sources of information.’ Regardless, I tend to get the truth out of them, whether reluctantly or otherwise!” (Source)
Little, White Lies
“‘The TV is broken.’
We went a full week without television. My son is two. It took him a little while to ‘get it.’ Either way, it was bliss. Bubble Guppies on repeat was making my ears bleed” (Source)
Mr. Browning’s Coming To Town
“My boy isn’t old enough to tell stories to yet, but I will recount one from my childhood.
If me or my brother were naughty, we would be threatened by our parents with a visit to Mr Browning. Ugh, even the name sends shivers down my spine.
Mr. Browning was a tall man with dark hair and big leather boots. My brain always imagined him to look like Hitler. He had a row of dungeons under his house and he has a whip with a nail on the end. All the naughty children stay with him for a while until they become good.
If I was being remotely naughty, my dad would pick up the phone and pretend to speak to Mr. Browning, and pretend to book me in. These were the days where phones didn’t have screens and had a rotating dialer. One time I was being particularly naughty and my mum called Mr. Browning. She made me put my coat on and wait in the porch. I was convinced that I was going.
It would work every time. Even the mention of his name would make me behave quick smart.
My boy is only a year old but soon I think Mr. Browning is going to come out of retirement” (Source)
So That’s Why…
“A friend’s kid (about 3–4 years old at the time) wouldn’t stop asking questions about anything and everything, all the time. Once, she came with me to a store to get a couple of things for a dinner we were fixing at their house, when she asked, ‘Why is there no sun at night, only moon?’
I hesitated for a second and then said, ‘Well, the sun is still too young, so they don’t let him go out past bedtime.’
She said, ‘Oh, I can’t stay up past bedtime either,’ and that was it. A quiet drive to and from the store. It was literally the first time she didn’t keep asking questions incessantly” (Source)
An Imaginary Brother
“Since childhood, whenever I used to cry while I was fed milk or bread, or didn’t study or do my homework, then I was told by my mom:
‘Ruth, my child, you know you have a brother of the same age as you. We have put him up in a boarding school far away from the city and he’s going to be a great doctor someday soon because he’s a very bright child. If you don’t study and eat well, then you’ll be left back alone in life and he’ll surpass you in everything. And God knows, it may happen in future then, that we start loving him more than we do you.’
These word filled me up with a peculiar kind of competitive spirit and I started working harder every time I heard this…just thinking that my brother from the boarding school would someday come and rob me of my parents’ love…
P.S: I would like to confess that I kept believing to the same LIE until I passed Primary school” (Source)
Aye Aye, Kitty!
“When my son was about five, our big old ginger tom cat left home one day and never returned. My son was understandably upset until I explained to him that Jasper had met a pirate who was having problems with too many mice on his pirate ship. The pirate asked Jasper to join his pirate crew to catch the mice. For several years after, I would get friends who were on holiday to send James a postcard from Jasper, telling him about his adventures on the high seas. James is 24 now and if you ask him about Jasper, he laughs and says, ‘Oh yeah, he went and became a pirate cat'” (Source)
The Binky Fairy
“We told her that if she left all of her pacifiers out on our driveway before she went to bed, the Binky Fairy would come during the night and replace all of the pacifiers in the basket with Tootsie Pops. My sister really loved Tootsie Pops. After some initial hesitation, she let me help her put all of her pacifiers into this little Easter basket and I walked her to the edge of our driveway as the sun was setting where we placed the basket of pacifiers. After she said a tearful goodbye to all of her binkies, we walked back inside and went to bed. The next morning we checked the basket and saw that the Binky Fairy had taken all of her pacifiers and filled the basket with Tootsie Pops, just as the legend had told. She was so happy sucking on her lollipops that she didn’t even miss her pacifiers.
In reality, my parents had just gone out in the middle of the night and taken the pacifiers and filled the basket with Tootsie Pops. My mom gave them all to a friend of hers who’d just had a baby, and that was the end of that” (Source)
The More You Know
“That you can’t grow any bigger if you don’t sleep in your own bed. Kids grow a little bit every day and there isn’t enough room for them to grow if them sleep in bed with mom and dad. If kids want to grow up and get big, they have to sleep in their own beds. Every. Single. Night” (Source)
Oh, Drat!
“One summer, my husband and I were driving to dinner with his sister and her husband, our 4-year-old daughter and their 5-year-old son. We drove past one of those temporary carnivals that pop up seemingly everywhere in July and August. The kids saw the rides and lights and started clamoring for us to go.
We’ve taken the kids to carnivals before but had no real desire to go this particular night. ‘If you’re on your best behavior,’ we replied, ‘we’ll bring you after dinner.’ They were angels at the restaurant. On the way home, we drove a different way, and passed a large, open and empty field.
‘Oh, no,’ said my brother-in-law, ‘The carnival is gone. Sorry kids, we missed it.’
Having no knowledge that we’d taken a different route or of what’s involved in breaking down a carnival, they believed us. They were a little disappointed, but we stopped for ice cream on the way home, and they quickly forgot about the carnival.
My daughter and nephew are now in their late 20s, and we still laugh about it with them” (Source)
There’s Always Next Time
“The lie I told today is small but effective. Like most working people, I have two days off each week. My weekends are hectic. Laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning, preparing for the upcoming week, paying bills, handling any problems from the previous week, etc. Children don’t understand, nor do I expect them to. However, to drive by a Toys R Us can be like me bumping into Brad Pitt. The boys start screaming and begging for me to stop the car. The word NOOOOO means nothing no matter how many times it is said. They don’t understand the concept of money, so being ‘broke’ doesn’t work. Therefore, I told my boys that Toys R Us is closed on my days off.
‘But why do they have a bunch of cars out front?’
‘Just because a store is closed to the public doesn’t mean the employees don’t have to work. There is plenty to be done.’
‘Next time you get an extra day off, can we go there?’
‘Of course we can.’
Works every time” (Source)