Parents Confess The White Lies They’ve Told Their Kids |
About the time my son turned 3, he and I started a tradition of leaving a plate of cookies out for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve (as countless families do).
As part of the tradition, I told my son that we also had to leave a few carrots on the plate for Santa’s reindeer because the deer would be famished from their long journey around the world delivering presents. And before my son woke up on Christmas morning, I would be sure to take a few bites out of each cookie and eat three-quarters of each carrot.
Now 13, my son has long since stopped believing my white lie about the reindeer having actually eaten the carrots we left in our living room on Christmas Eve, not to mention Santa eating the cookies.
My Christmas tall tale is just one example of the – sometimes downright hilarious – white lies that parents tell children.
Whether it’s to create magic around the holidays, discourage unwanted behaviours (we’ve seen you tell them your sweet coffee drink is ‘spicy’ and they wouldn’t like it), or encourage a child to eat a particular food that’s good for them, parents regularly employ colourful lies to get the job done.
Parents may occasionally tell "silly fibs," Emily Greenberg, co-founder and president of the Joy Parenting Club, explains, but they are often "just a way to survive the moment.”Here are seven amusing examples of the white lies parents tell – and some thoughts from experts on whether these tales are as “harmless” as we think they are.
‘You must sacrifice Halloween candy to the Great Pumpkin.’
Few parents are likely thrilled about the overflowing bags of candy children bring home on Halloween. But California mom Jessica Randhawa, creator and head chef for the recipe website The Forked Spoon, has employed a popular white lie to address this predicament with her son.
“Every year, after trick-or-treating when my son was younger, when we got back home, we would tell our son the white lie about The Great Pumpkin,” said Randhawa. “However many years of age he was at the time, he was allowed to keep that many pieces of candy. The rest of the candy would be sacrificed to the Great Pumpkin by leaving them on our counter.”
In the morning (after The Great Pumpkin had, of course, visited), the excess pieces of Halloween candy would have vanished from the Randhawa household. It was replaced by a present that the Great Pumpkin had delivered.
“It was a great way to keep my son’s sugar intake down for his health’s sake,” Randhawa said. “And we wouldn’t waste the candy. Since he was so little and went to bed early, we were able to put the rest of his candy in a bowl out on the porch by 8 p.m. or 9 p.m. for older kids to empty.”
‘Siri is on vacation.’
Siri has become ubiquitous in households, but for some parents, the voice-controlled AI chatbot can become more than a little annoying. Such was the case for Amy Vale, a Texas mom and founder of the anxiety products platformFor the Cubs, whose 5-year-old foster daughter would call on Siri to play the same nursery rhymes........