I'm a liar. Or rather an "omitter of truths" but really, doesn't that actually just mean... I'm a liar? Last night I gave Liam milk with his dinner. It was 1%. We usually get 2% but an unfortunate misunderstanding led to lower fat content (otherwise known as watery milk). Last night we bought the right milk but that still left us with a jug of the skim. Blech. So I did what any other responsible parent would do, I served the skim to Liam without telling him. Now I could spin this by saying it's better for him anyway and he needs to acquire a taste for skim at an early age (unlike his mother and father). But then again, that would be being dishonest to you too. Really I gave Liam the skim because I know we hate the skim but I also hate to waste so someone's got to drink it.
It's not as though this has never happened before, there was the time I gave Liam and Josh the shredded wheat squares instead of the frosted mini wheats (notice the omission of "frosted"). They said they didn't like it because the squares were different sizes... but I knew the truth; that their new mini wheats were lacking that sweet crusty frosting. This morning for breakfast I saw that half full box of shredded mini wheats and decided to try some myself... I regretted my choice immediately. Who ever ate shredded wheat without the frosting (answer: me when I was about 5 years old because my parents tortured me with sugar free cereals and apple juice made in a blender)? And how could they cope with such a tasteless cereal (answer: by pouring on cups of pure sugar and justifying it by saying that real sugar is better than crusty processed cereal frosting).
Lying really is a part of parenting, or rather, omitting the truth is. What do we say when a 5 year old asks how the baby gets into the womb, for example? Well, when confronted with this question I was able to get as far as "the daddy has a sperm and the mommy has an egg" and when they come together, it makes a baby. I was proud of myself for being so honest... until Liam asked how the sperm got inside of the mommy. That's when I decided to omit the rest of the truth (and run away).
Liam brought home a library book called "Benno and the Night of the Broken Glass". I knew as soon as I opened it and read the setting (Berlin, Germany) that this wouldn't be good. It was a book about Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) from the perspective of a cat. Did I really want to start into a conversation about the holocaust with a 5 year old? Did I want to start that conversation from the perspective of a cat? For the first time when reading a bedtime story to Liam, I found myself reading him a story without a happy ending. There was no way to spin it really except to stop reading, which he didn't want me to do. I think he thought it would all end happily, how could I tell him that after the last page of this book, things actually got so much worse? I've described September 11th before to Liam. Some people might find it hard to describe that event to their children, but I think I did okay. I told him about a group of people called terrorists who wanted to make people in America sad and how they really did smash down buildings. I told him it made everybody very sad.
So what should we honestly tell our children? Should we tell them the truth about marriage equality when they say "only men and women can get married" or should we just smile when a 4 year old tells us that he wants to marry his best friend (also a boy)? Should we tell them the full truth about cigarettes- yes, they cause cancer but they also fell good so sometimes you might see daddy smoking one. Should you have to confess if you take a piece of candy from their jack-o-lanterns after they go to bed? Or what if they notice that Daddy never gets peas on his plate, should you tell them that he hates them, thus risking that they will start to hate peas too? You just never know when you will be confronted with a situation that demands some level of truth. Then the question becomes, not how much of a lie will they buy into, but how much truth can you omit? Yet beware, what you omit today will need to be explained another day. Maybe at bedtime, or at a family party or on a long car ride one afternoon.
No comments:
Post a Comment