ONE still sees things very black/white. To her it’s either right or wrong.
I know the time is coming when it will all be about Gray. How quickly she can prove that what she did, or said, was somehow okay. Somehow within the boundaries of what was allowed. That it was a matter of interpretation and that I missed something.
I know it’s coming because Gray is a childhood art form.
One I took on as a personal challenge until I became an adult and realized that I was actually cheating myself and the people I loved. And that there was no one to make up the difference for me.
So now, as I watch her process and reason, I appreciate the way she sees things. And I work really hard to make sure that what I present her with is honest. Because I know at some point my honestly, especially regarding the little things, will make an impact on how she chooses to respond to things in her own life. Myself included.
And as I’m sure you know, it’s really hard not to lie to a kid.
Not in a mean way, but sometimes it’s hard to be entirely honest with a child when you know they won’t understand. (“Why don’t they have a home?”) Or when what you say will lead to a discussion that is beyond their comprehension. (“But if she died, then when will you die? And who will be my mommy then?”) Or you just want to get the hell out of the store without an unnecessary meltdown. (“But whyyyyyyyyy can’t I say that? It’s the truth. Daddy said we don’t wear clothes like that in public!”)
It has always been important to me not to lie to my kids. About anything. Sure I’ll word things in a way that an adult would know that I’m actually dodging her question or trying to change the subject, but when it comes down to it, I tell her the truth. (I’m not saying that I’ve never lied, Santa does visit our house, just that strive not to.)
Enter Gray.
ONE loves WordGirl. As an ex-PBS employee I celebrate that show with her because PBS is awesome. If you haven’t seen it, WordGirl is a superman-type show about a secret superhero 5th grader who uses advanced vocabulary words to save the world from evildoers misusing the English language. (Secretly set in Northern Virginia? Perhaps…)
Anyway, at the start of each episode Becky Botsford. (Clark Kent) realizes that something is amiss and has to distract those around her so they don’t notice her disappear to turn into:
The other day ONE was watching the show and called me into the room (yeah, yeah, I don’t watch TV with her. I’m one of those. I admit it, BACK OFF).
ONE: Mama? Is WordGirl a liar?
ME: (DAMN, I really need to watch these shows with her…) Why, Pea?
ONE: Well, it’s just that she told her parents that she was going to catch butterflies, but she wasn’t. She was going to turn into WordGirl. So she told them something so they’d believe her, but it wasn’t true. That makes her a liar, doesn’t it?
ME: Wow. Yes. You’re right, she is telling a lie.
ONE: Hmmmmm…
NOOOOOOOOOOOO PBS, how could you do this to me?
I know, I know.
1) She’s a little young for the show. 2) It’s the superhero dynamic. If WG didn’t do that, she’d be putting family in danger of being hurt by villains, or 3) her parents might fear for her safety and keep her in the house, thereby allowing villains to run free and do bad things to other innocent people.
But stripping all of that down to the black-and-white brain of a 4 year-old, WordGirl IS telling a lie.
Some might say a “white lie,” but regardless of the color, it’s still a lie.
So anyway, I bring this up because I’m curious about how other people handle this kind of situation.
Do you think it’s a relative issue? Is there really a sliding scale of lies? Or are white lies really just a gateway lie? Is a lie a lie? Or is it a sometimes lie? Am I blowing this out of proportion? (I’m not above admitting that.)
I know this is one of those judgmental-type topics, so please feel free to comment anonymously. (>>click here<< and scroll down to the bottom of the page for instructions on how to do that.)
.
.
©2009 CEK. All Rights Reserved. Touch my stuff and shame on you. I think you need to go back and re-read what you’re stealing.
Want some daily affirmation that you’re not the only bad mommy out there? Follow me on Twitter and we’ll bad-mommy-it together.
Tags: childhood, honesty, lies, PBS Kids, perspective, wordgirl
June 26, 2009 at 8:31 am |
First what are you doing up, wait your on the east coast, never mind. I have always tried to be honest but sometimes you have to fudge a little because they are too young to understand the whole truth. I have never outright lied to my kids though which has gotten me into trouble thru the years. I even had one of them tell me “but your my mom you are suppose to lie to me” She had asked if I liked her new haircut.
June 26, 2009 at 8:39 am |
It’s instances like these that have me saying “did I just hear the doorbell” or “I like your Dad is calling you” or better yet “ask your Dad.”
I don’t lie to my daughter but I certainly do not expand on certain topics that I know she’s too young to fully understand.
How’s Santa at your house – he comes to mine too but he has magically powers and doesn’t set our alarm off….which I totally lied about.
June 26, 2009 at 8:48 am |
Chuckles LOVES Word Girl and funny, she’s never called me into the room to ask me if WG is a liar. Great. Now my kid thinks it’s ok to lie. Maybe I will watch it with her today.
I have found that I must get really creative with my answers with these girls. Poonch, well, she’s old (and smart) enough that I just have to tell her the gosh-darn truth. Which has led to some tears (like at the end of Marley and Me or when my grandma died). But I think she is stronger for it. Chuckles is still young and I can get away with some white lies. But then I’ve noticed that she has started looking at me funny lately…
As usual, I am no help at all.
June 26, 2009 at 9:34 am |
tough question… here is my take on it.
in my adult view of the truth, I define it as extreme as … to withhold the truth is to tell a lie. So silence can be lying. I could give loads of examples but I will spare you. I don’t believe in white lies… ever. you know the kind.. “if it’s for me, tell them I’m not here” is a lie. And if your kids hear you say stuff like that, they will lie also. It’s just as easy to say “I’m sorry, but he asked if he could get back to you, he can’t talk now.”
Sometimes, it’s not about the truth rather it’s about what’s appropriate. In the case of…. Daddy said we don’t wear clothes like that in public!”) Like if a friends asks ” Have I gained a lot of weight, do I look fat?” You can answer with a question “Do you want a feel good answer or not?” I raised my kids on the truth, the whole truth. There is always time for the gray that they create. And there is the option of talking about ‘make believe’ which all kids understand, right? So Wordgirl is make believe so she does what she has to do to help people in her show. I used to explain things like this by saying ….just like Cinderella or Santa. But then, my kids knew Santa was make believe. They still sat on his lap. They just knew the truth.
June 26, 2009 at 10:10 am |
Do you want your kids to lie? I do not. You get what you give. So I Tell the truth. Ask questions and help them learn. “I think you are right, WordGirl did lie. Why do you think WordGirl did that? What do you think she could have done instead?”. It is a tough route sometimes, and you do not always get the easiest result or the desired result, but you get the real result. Life is muttled and a whole lot of gray. We must be the safe, informative place where kids learn that or they will be left to figure it out for themselves. Then you will have to answer even more complicated questions. Most kids are far more intelligent and observant, as you have noted, so we are only fooling ourselves and most lies (if you really dig) are used to save ourselves from uncomfortable feelings, no matter what size the lie or what color. Think about your goal as a mom? Think about the motivation behind the urge to lie? My partner does not fully agree with me and thinks “small” lies are ok. Then one day our 2 y.o. daughter caught him and that ended that. My parents always told me the truth, and yes, at times I was scared and confused, but I always felt safe and loved. My friend’s parents told “small” lies, like Santa is real. One day I heard my friend’s sister talking about Santa and I told her that he was not real. I was not trying to be mean, I was just clearing up a misunderstanding. Well, she started bawling and ran to her mom. Minutes later her mom told me to tell my friend’s sister that I was lying and Santa was in fact real. That obviously left a very large imprint in my brain. You can be sure I ran home to tell my mom and dad about that.
June 26, 2009 at 10:13 am |
Ugh, what a sticky wicket. I do teach the girls that lying is wrong. But I also teach them that manners are important, which maybe entails keeping your mouth shut and/or “fudging” things a little so as not to hurt someone’s feelings. Which is contradictory, I know.
I guess, for me, human feelings are more important than firm truth. If telling the truth is going to be hurtful, I usually encourage the “fudge.”
But that comes back to bite me in the ass because Miss D. lied last month, I busted her for it, asked her why she lied and she said, “because if told you you’d get mad and that hurts ME.” shit, this mothering thing is hard.
June 26, 2009 at 10:17 am |
P.S. If you are going to let someone or something else shape and mold your child(ren) it is important to be aware of what they are saying and what they are doing…..no matter what the source (TV, video games, grandparents, neighbors). Don’t take candy from a stranger right?! Strangers with candy come in all shapes and sizes, be aware of what they are eating.
June 26, 2009 at 10:18 am |
What? Santa isn’t real?
Thanks for letting me down easy…
June 26, 2009 at 10:34 am |
First, for the record… It’s Botsford. Becky Botsford. And she rules.
Yes, she’s telling a lie. Are all lies bad lies? That’s a matter of interpretation. When you tell your kids there are no such things as monsters, that’s a lie isn’t it? But one they need to hear I imagine. If we all went around saying precisely what was on our minds every second of the day, the world would be an unbearable place to live in.
WG is no more a liar than I am a truck driver because i once drove a laundry truck on a couple distinct occasions.
Narrow adherence to any black/white dialectic logic is kinda dangerous no matter what the subject is….
Maybe you can try to explain the difference between what makes a habitual liar, who gets “branded” a a liar, and everyone else.
June 26, 2009 at 1:31 pm |
Dear Defender of all things BOTSFORD,
I humbly apologize for my gross misspelling. Because you were right. I was wrong. And there is no Gray area in spelling.
And as one who claims to still *heart* PBS, I should’ve known better.
CK
June 26, 2009 at 10:41 am |
My 4yo boy also loves WordGirl, but we haven’t run into the whole “lying” issue yet. But he’s fully absorbed in all things superhero at this point, so the secret identity is not new. It is, as Spiderman says, part of the responsibility that comes with their great power.
June 26, 2009 at 10:51 am |
Great question. Mostly I advocate the unvarnished truth, but there are those occasions…
As for WG, here’s what I would do:
-Ask her what a lie is (she clearly knows)
-Ask her if WG lied (she did)
-Ask her to help you come up with different ways she could’ve handled it (it’s fiction, so fictionally maybe she could tell her parents and they’d be okay…)
-Talk about the choices you make and consequences (keep it simple)
-Underscore that coming to mom and dad when you have a problem like that is the right thing to do and that no matter how big or supernatural your rpoblem/power they canalways help…
Would this help? I have no idea!! But it’s what I would do…
June 26, 2009 at 11:47 am |
Well i certainly do not see what you tell to your little sweetie as a lie… ya it may be a lie but it is not said to hurt anyone… i would prefer to answer by little stars questions then letting someone else tell it… they will grow up and understanding will come automatically… you are a being a terrific mom
June 26, 2009 at 12:18 pm |
Oh, yeah, they’re grey artists when they WANT to be.
But just you try using imprecise wording. They’ll call you on it every time. Grey only applies to THEM.
June 26, 2009 at 12:43 pm |
I would take it one situation at a time. I teach Lael the difference between a joke and a lie. When I ask her if she brushed her teeth she says yes but didn’t she tries to laugh it off and say “I was joking you mom” I explain that that’s a lie but telling me there’s a bug in my hair and seeing me jump around is a joke. She understands but needs reminding from time to time. Don’t we all?
June 26, 2009 at 2:07 pm |
Sooner or later she will have to learn the art of the little white lie. Nobody can go through life being brutally honest all of the time unless they hell bent on being a hermit. Maybe you can tell her that sometimes it is ok to say things that are not 100% true but she could still have some truth in there. Say if your best friend asks if you like what there wearing and you say yeah, even though the pants are way to tight, but you looked smokin hot in the dress you had on the other day. See you lied but redeemed it with a truth that would hopefully get them away from the to tight pants in the future.
June 26, 2009 at 2:09 pm |
“April Fool”: the undoing of truth-telling in my household. Since April 1st, my daughter delights in telling me all sorts of lies, (the teacher told me to go and stand in the corridor today etc etc ) and then when she sees my face (and I fall for it like, EVERY SINGLE TIME) she shouts “April fool!” I’ve been telling her that THREE WHOLE MONTHS have passed, but she says she can do it me. Last time I said, in that really serious, I-mean-business voice: “OK, this has to stop. I don’t want you April Fooling me any more”. When I saw her face, for a moment I was tempted to shout: April Fool!
But I got hold of myself, and I didn’t.
June 26, 2009 at 3:32 pm |
I love your post today, CK!! Mainly because I am a childless parent who avidly believes in being 100% honest with my future unborn children (I hope that gives me room to talk…) I think honesty is the best policy. Always and forever. I think there is different kinds of lying or let’s put it in terms I prefer (cause that’s what Liars do) “Stretching the Truth.” Word Girl is merely stretching the truth or using her decoy strategies to help solve criminal activties! But to solve this puzzle. Word Girl is a SUPER HERO (let alone a cartoon). In my opinion real world rules do not apply to her. And to really answer this question….it’s definitely OK to lie if you are doing so with intentions of saving the world from evil people (aka the Butcher).
Also, along those lines…if your newly pregnant friend asks if she looks fat in her new dress (which she honestly just might) Do you tell her that? or do you enforce the white lie method??
June 26, 2009 at 4:57 pm |
In the case of Word Girl (which I’ve never seen) I think I would explain that it is make believe. Superheroes do not really exist. When we make art (cartoons included) we are free to use our imaginations in ways we don’t in day to day interactions. It’s OK that Word Girl lies to be a superhero because it’s all pretend.
I was raised by a mother who lied (still does) constantly. No, most of the lies were not big or bad, but they really confused me. I hated that she lied and I would out her all the time only to get in trouble later for contradicting her in public. I think it’s dangerous to lie because people lose trust in you. To this day I do not believe half the things my mother says. She’s wonderful, but she’s a liar, exaggerator, whatever you want to call it. I would never want my daughter to feel that way about me. I also think that your character becomes stronger the more you exercise the truth. Having said that, there is a difference between being honest and tactful. Little kids are too young to be tactful. That’s a lesson that comes later.
June 26, 2009 at 5:56 pm |
This is hard. I read all the comments because I know that I’m going to have this issue in the next week or two. Thanks for the heads up, by the way.
I worry about this because I am a liar. I’m an awesome liar. While I’ve tried to refrain, I still do it. (We only got the bill yesterday. Honestly, there isn’t any other guy I think about. I don’t know where the super loud, super heavy toy you were hitting your brother is.) The only great part is that I can tell a liar from the beginning. I’m rarely buffoloed.
But I don’t want my boys to be liars. More to the point I don’t want them to lie to me. So when we read The Cat in The Hat and it asks what would you tell your mother, I say how I wouldn’t mind a Cat in the house if you cleaned up after your mess. So I would tell him that if he was a superhero, I would want to know so I could help. When he does do a lie that I catch him in, he goes in to time out, which I wonder if that actually will help. But if he tells me the truth when he’s done something wrong, I shave off some of the time out time, which I wonder if that will help.
Damn this motherhood stuff is hard.
June 26, 2009 at 6:48 pm |
I found an out. Three, really.
One: WordGirl is pretend. Cartoons are pretend. And there are different rules for cartoons.
Two: My love, you know how nice people sometimes do not nice tthings? Like when Mommy gets angry and yells but Mommy is still nice she just did something not nice? Or when TWO grabs something but she is still nice she just doesn’t know yet about not grabbing. Well, WordGirl is nice, but she did tell one lie. I hope she says sorry.
Three: Yes, sweet pea, but so is everyone who talks about Santa, so let’s just let a little butterfly lie go.
June 27, 2009 at 5:20 am |
While I haven’t had to deal with this with the Poose (yet), Captain Underpants and Wolver-teen have both been through this one. CU opts for the “tall tales” (anything involving the appearance of a T-Rex, Peter Parker, a shark in cental Alabama, and other flights of fancy). We’ve clarified that using one’s imagination and sharing the story is fine, but lying (done by kids to avoid punishment usually) is not. W-t always went (and sometimes still goes) for the out-right bald-faced lie (Did you brush your teeth? Yes – really a dab of toothpaste on the tongue and wetting the toothbrush). I think the Poose is going to be the “tall-tale variety”, he already likes a lot of pretend play (he’s the mom & I’m the Poose, he’s a kitty/puppy/dinosaur, etc). Here’s hoping…
As for WordGirl, I’d probab;y use her as a teaching tool: What did she do wrong, what should she have done different, and so on. Of course when you’re a kid with super-powers and your parents don’t know, that makes for some sticky situations.
June 27, 2009 at 12:21 pm |
Nap, I love the cartoon justification! We’re always talking about how cartoons are “pretend” because although maybe the kids aren’t old enough to really think about cartoon vs. reality, they ARE old enough to copy what they see. So we’ve had to talk about why, for example, it’s ok for certain cartoon people to jump off of something really high but not for us…so perhaps lying can be part of that convo. You’re brilliant!
June 27, 2009 at 11:37 pm |
I dunno dude. We’re trying to be the same way and never lie to the kids. We actually planned on NOT lying about Santa but quickly found out that we’d be ostracized and our kids wouldn’t be welcome anywhere if they spread their truths. It sucks but I think that gray will have to be an area to visit sometimes for the benefit of everyone involved.
June 28, 2009 at 12:56 am |
I’m just glad I’m not there yet. Though it does make me curious about what I’ll do when I get there. Thanks for the post, it’s good to think about.
June 28, 2009 at 11:35 am |
First, I have to tell you I am watching Word Girl as I read and type. The villanous granny character seriously just got flustered and shouted, “Ahhh, mothers!”
Anyhoo, I think you should play the shell game with ONE; you know, move things around until she’s totally confused. Ask her why Becky’s ding-dong parents don’t realize that their own daughter is from another planet, for example. Or, worse, point out that her own brother has a mad crush on her whenever she’s in WG incarnation — basically a superhero who looks just like (and IS) his sister wearing a red Spandex jumpsuit. Incest! That’ll highlight how ridiculous the whole premise is, as well as keep her up at nights.
But seriously, it’s a kind of marvelous milestone you’re hitting over there. I can’t pinpoint the precise moment when my daughter (5 1/2 years old) started seeing gray areas, but now she is ALWAYS looking for holes in people’s rules, theories, ideas, etc. While her interrogations fluster me sometimes, it’s also exciting to see her growing into a critical thinker. No longer am I the final-say answer book for her. Now I tell her what I think about things, and she has her own opinions about them that sometimes differ from mine. We can have real discussions. Also, there are many instances where she recognizes that the didactic thing doesn’t cut it, and many others where she refuses to accept that there is a gray — like, this morning, when she was trying to get to the heart of what “an Obama” does. She kept trying to make it a black and white conversation, and I kept making it gray. I said, “It’s complicated,” and then I explained, in terms I thought she might be able to grasp, what I meant by complicated. The nice thing about doing it like that is that she sometimes just gets tired of my rambling diatribe and moves on to something else. So, I haven’t had to lie to her; I’ve actually bored her to diversion with the truth! (That’s my suggestion: Bore your children to distraction with elaborately truthful answers that are slightly over their heads!)
BTW, my answer to the question of whether WG is a liar would be to say that one lie does not a liar make. Then I’d turn the conversation to the topic of labels (like “liar”).
June 29, 2009 at 12:35 am |
I would just like to say, if I’m ever in Virginia, I’m so looking you up! If you’re as funny in person as you are on here, that would totally ROCK! Anyway. A lie is a lie, regardless it’s color, but sometimes, depending on the situation, it may be necessary…