Tell Me Lies

She does it without flinching, without looking away, with such great sincerity that it is almost impossible to discern whether I am being duped.

It is a Monday morning.  I am urging Sophia to please decide whether she is taking Snakey-Pie or Moosey to school and to put him in her nap bag.  Sophie holds up a pastel pink plastic egg from an Easter egg hunt.

“Mom, can I please take this egg to school?”

I am immediately suspicious.  “Why?”

“I just want to show my friends.”

“What’s in the egg, Sophie?”

“Nothing."

“Then let me see it.”

“Two jelly beans.”

“No, Sophia.  You may not take jellybeans to school.  It would not be nice or fair to eat jelly beans in front of your friends.”

“But Mom!  I won’t!”  Oh no I’ve said too much.  I’ve forgot the cardinal rule of dealing with a 5-year-old:  No bargaining. 

“I said no, Sophie.  Leave it here.” 

Fast forward to pick up time.

I am gathering Sophie’s six-hundred and three drawings, which I will stealthily recycle when we get home.  I pick up the nap bag.  A pastel pink plastic egg rolls out.

I have been deceived. 

“Sophia?” I say, holding up the egg, “what’s this?”

“My egg?”

“Is there anything inside the egg?”

“No.”

“Was there anything inside the egg?”

“No.”

“I’ll ask you one more time.  Was there anything inside the egg?”

“Yes.  Two jellybeans.”

“What happened to the jellybeans?”

“I ate them during nap.”

“Sophia!  I told you not to bring it to school.”

“I know.  But it got in there by accident.”

I try to raise one eyebrow, but both go up.

“I swear, Mommy!  I’m telling the truth!”

And then there was last week, after the kindness party.  We were headed home from school.

“So what’d you do at the party?”

“Miss P’s husband came and made animal balloons.  I want to give mine to Madeline.”

“That’s nice.  How come?”

“Because Madeline likes puppies.”

“Okay.  What else?”

“Well…we had strawberries and grapes and M and M’s, but I only ate the strawberries and grapes.”

I find this shocking.  “Really?  Why?”

“Well…actually I had strawberries and grapes and Pirate Booty,” she added, testing the waters.

“Soph, it was a party.  You were allowed to have what they served.” 

“Well…actually I didn’t have strawberries and grapes, just M and M’s and donuts and Pirate Booty,” she admits, coming clean. 

Sigh.  “Sophie, I’m glad you told me the truth, but I don’t like the fact that you lied to me.” 

“I’m sorry.  I won’t do it again.”

Another lie.

And the problem is:  she will.  This lying thing is working out for her.  Sophie has discovered that (because I place a premium on honesty) if she does the thing she knows she should not do, and initially lies about it, but then fesses up, I will be so glad that she told me the truth (or want to encourage future truth telling), that I will let the disobedience slide. 

Genius, really.  Wish I had thought of it as a kid.  But I just told the truth, because of my George Washington Complex, which I still suffer from today. 

Sophie has no such problem. 

What I’m doing?  Doesn’t feel like it’s working.    Kevin thinks that because she has already mastered the fine art of false genuineness, we’re out of time to drive home the importance of simple honesty.  “How can a parent teach honesty when we don’t know the truth?” 

So, despite having contributed to an article on what to do if your child is lying (my advice:  reward the truth, which, we’ve established, has backfired), I decided to seek some professional advice.   

One very non-nonsense psychologist/mom told me this: 

“Do not ask for the truth, whether she did it, or what happened.  If you do, you’re just putting them in a position to lie more, or argue with you, or guilt them into telling you.  None of that is necessary.  Speak as though you know it happened, address it and move on.  Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

Another shared this.  “Oh, lying.  It’s a stage.  She’ll grow out of it.”

This is what I wanted to hear.  Yes.  Tell me it will magically disappear.  That my child is not honing her powers of manipulation for bigger and juicer lies.  Practicing her technique until she can stare me down and lie with a smile, no hint of fear or remorse flickering across her face. 

Tell me that she is merely being careless with the truth.  Experimenting with what she can get away with.  Giving into her id, and asking forgiveness later. 

Tell me that one day, she’ll be honest and forthright.  A model citizen. That unlike most people, who cop to lying at least twice a day, she will be a paragon of truth. 

In other words,

Lie to me. 

  

If Mommy Says No...

The psychological term is splitting, more commonly known playing one parent against the other. All kids do it, my husband reminds me. Even Sophia.

Sophia and I are at the supermarket. I’m comparing prices of little boxes of organic milk. (Though expensive, it’s cheaper than buying a new fresh half-gallon each week we go up to my mother’s and stay overnight. And, I’m suspicious of the “Skim Plus!” she buys. Just the thought of drinking milk with a thickening agent to make it taste more like whole milk makes me ill. But I digress.) Sophie spies the milk in the red boxes…vanilla-flavored organic milk. The one that has a whopping 29 grams of sugar per serving. A treat she once had while we were out to dinner with friends. "I want THAT ONE!" she demands, pointing to the box. I say something to the effect of, “over my dead body,” (not a verbatim quote, but similar in sentiment).

Had she not been in the grocery cart, she would have most definitely thrown herself on the ground sobbing and cursing my name. Confined to her seat, she merely wailed and lamented her vanilla milk-less fate. Only two strategies work in a situation like this: ignoring and distraction. Ignoring is hard in a grocery store at 5:30 pm when you and every other mother within a 10-mile radius is shopping for dinner. I can’t just leave her there and continue to peruse the isle…and it IS a little embarrassing to have her go on in this way. So I go for distraction. I pull a bottle of lemonade off the shelf and say, “I’m getting daddy lemonade. Perhaps I will let you have some as a treat, sometime [watered down, of course].” The tantrum comes to a screeching halt and Sophie grins, “Daddy lets me have LOTS and LOTS of lemonade.”

This comment comes on the heels of an early morning confession. When Kevin and I went to pull her out of her crib today, the first thing she announced was that she ate dinner at the neighbor’s house and had lemonade to drink with her daddy. I glanced at Kevin, who admitted, it was true. She did.

Perhaps this requires a little backstory: A less rigid parent than I might be wondering, “What’s wrong with lemonade?” I have a couple issues with juice. First of all, there is the sugar content (the particular variety I pulled off the shelf has 32 grams per serving). It is near impossible to brush Sophia’s teeth. Only recently have I stopped sitting on top of her, prying her mouth open and doing the best job I can while Kevin reads Curious George Takes a Job (or another ultra-sexy book). So, I fear the day we go to the dentist and he has to sedate her while he drills every pearly little tooth in her mouth. Then there are the empty calories. Back in the day, when Sophia ate very poorly, I was loathe to have her fill up on any kind of drink and then refuse a more nutritious meal…so it was water, milk or nothing. Since she’s been eating a variety of healthy foods and is solidly in the 10th-25th percentile for weight, I’ve relaxed…but I still prefer her to drink bone-building milk or plain-old hydrating water. And then there is cultivation of taste. I know that kids who don’t drink milk, don’t develop a taste or appreciation for it. They are less likely to select it as a drink option on their own later in life, and therefore tend to be more deficient in the nutrients it provides. So it goes beyond the here and now for me. It has to do with laying a foundation for healthy life choices.

That evening, at home, I told Kevin what Sophia said. I related the story with a knowing grin that communicated, “I know you’ve been giving her juice behind my back.”

Kevin was offended. “She’s splitting us.” He told me. “She’s telling you what she thinks will manipulate you into giving her more juice.”

I still didn’t believe him. I believed her. After all, her impulse to report her experience these days was so great she’d save up a detail…like having juice at the neighbors…all night long and blurt it out with pure joy at the first sight of me.

Kevin read my skepticism and explained why it was so offensive. “It’s true that left to my own devices, I wouldn’t be as restrictive as you are with the juice. But I think your rationale is sound, and I’ve bought into it wholesale. I fully support you on this. When we’re in our own house, I do exactly as you wish. But occasionally, when we’re somewhere else and if everyone is having juice…and another parent gives it to her, I don’t force the issue. We’re guests in their home. I’m not going to push back.”

I listened to him. And it’s true. Kevin does support me on this. And not just on the juice issue but the unprocessed, organic food issue. And the tv issue. And countless other issues/ preferences I have when it comes to raising Sophia.

I consider myself to be lucky on this. Because what it comes down to it’s not the individual issues that are important, but the united front that we present on these individual issues. The power resides with us, the parents. Sophia is not a wedge between Kevin and I, but a shared joy. Sophia feels secure in knowing that there are rules consistently enforced.

So the next time Sophia pulls out the divide and conquer strategy and tells me that daddy gives her lots and lots of juice (or ice cream, or lollypops) with the very high hope that I will “follow suit,” the knowing grin will be directed at her, not Kevin. And I’ll probably say something like, “Daddy and I talked about this and we agree….”