A HELPFUL ARTICLE
Lies Worth Telling your Toddler
First of all let me first wish you all a Happy Mothers Day (especially those like me with a toddler) and state the obvious, we LOVE our kids. Even though they drive us insane, we cannot imagine life without them. But, if you are a mom you have lied to your child and if you are not a mom, you have been lied to by your mother. I am not talking about Santa or lies we tell to protect their innocence. I am talking about the little white lies we tell them on a DAILY basis to protect our sanity. I was starting to wonder if I had a problem when I myself began buying into these lies..like “sorry honey but we cant watch Paw Patrol the tv remote is broken”, then later on think to myself is it really broken? I can’t remember. And I started blaming my dogs, “Oh honey we don’t have that horribly annoying musical duck, one of the dogs must’ve eaten him”…#baddogmom. Growing up, my parents always said “Stop making that face or it will stick like that!”..so not true, but I was so terrified I would stop. I mean sometimes we are doing this to protect them from eating unhealthy foods or getting hurt, and other times we do it just so we can avoid a situation or full blown tantrum. I will also say that I never lie to my daughter about REAL things like why she doesn’t have a brother or sister, or what happens when people die, so I figure I get some extra mom credit for the other little falsies I tell her…right? Before calling for an intervention or feeling like a #badmom, I took to social media for a little market research. I asked other moms what lies they have told their children or have been told as kids and I got some hilarious responses.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
-”McDonalds is only open on Fridays”
-”They don’t sell replacement batteries for that toy”
-”When at the store I say, every time you touch something in here a kitten dies”
-”I showed a picture of a meth mouth to my child and told him if he didn’t give up his binky his teeth would look like that. It worked, slightly traumatized him, but it worked”
-”My parents used to give us salad and veggies after our main course and refer to them as dessert. All our family friends were in on it too, but one time my mom slipped and forgot to tell another mom. I had a full blown tantrum at a sleepover because they served us dessert before our meal”
-”If you unravel your belly button your hiney will fall off”
-”When my child won’t eat something I always tell her she’s eaten it before and liked it, not only did you like it you had 2 plates!”
-”If you eat pancake mix, worms will grow in your stomach”
-”If you tell a lie you will get a black mark on your tongue. So if they thought we were fibbing, they asked us to stick our tongue out! #builtinliedetector
-”We installed a device in your truck that sends us your speed and weight so we always know if you are speeding or have too many people in the truck”
-”The tooth fairy wants teeth so she can turn them into fairy dust and fly”
-”When the advertisements on the planes at the beach would fly by and my kid asked what it said, we always replied, it says brush your teeth or listen to your parents”
-”When my dog would hump something we would say it was hugging. So every time they saw it they would run over and say “she’s trying to hug us again!”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Turns out my research confirmed my hypothesis that other moms do this as much as I do. We don’t need interventions, we need each other!!! Momming is not easy (see my post on Finding your identity in motherhood) and for me finding my #momsquad has been life changing. Knowing that there are other moms out there JUST LIKE ME makes me feel like I am not alone and I can conquer anything my kid throws at me..literally and figuratively.