Pinocchio Parenting
The right way and wrong way to lie to your kids.
by Brett Berk
August 29, 2008
When my friend Leslie takes her toddler to the toy store, she pre-empts his consumer cravings him by telling him it's a museum. "You can look, but don't touch. And we can't take anything home." When my friend Zev's daughter wants to watch television during the day, he reminds her of their flat-screen's nocturnal tendencies. "The TV's sleeping right now. It'll be awake later, when mommy's trying to make dinner." And when my sister-in-law wanted to keep her two year-old away from an off-limit zone — the stove, a stool, her bourbon on the rocks — she'd use a fiery catch-all. "Hot! Hot!"
All parents are susceptible to the lure of the lie: to smooth over conflict, to avoid a melt down, to keep your daughter from thinking daddy was trying to shank mommy when she walks in on you two in the shower. And there are certainly ways in which playfully bending the truth can entertain your child. After we served grapes for snack at the preschool I directed, we'd ask the kids if they'd enjoyed eating "sheep eyeballs." When our friend's son calls me by my boyfriend's name, I sometimes reciprocate by "forgetting" his name too, calling him by his sister's tag, or a nonsense word like Oobly. And when Tal and I go on family trips with our nieces, he keeps them engaged for hours with tales of abductions and escapes he experienced in the "Bermuda Triangle."
These kinds of playful lies are effective and appropriate for young kids, because everyone involved is in on the joke. Kids know innately that grapes are a fruit, not an ovine ocular. They're aware that I'm not quite so dimwitted as to mistake them for their sister. And they're certain that Tal has not, in reality, wrestled an eighty-foot tall, five-headed robot spider alien on a radioactive Caribbean spaceship. How do they know this? Because we tell them. Either overtly — by eventually reminding them that we're making it up — or through cues like exaggerating our voice, tone or body language.
All parents are susceptible to the lure of the lie to smooth over conflict.
Harvey Karp, in his bestselling book The Happiest Toddler on the Block refers to this practice as "Playing the Boob." If you acted like this all the time, your kid might think that you were an idiot. But because of biological instinct — and our being bigger and more capable — young kids generally assume that the adults around them are of superior intelligence, so if you suddenly and dramatically start acting dopey, they get that you're pulling their leg. It's like covering your eyes and asking "Where's Danielle?" or letting your kid beat you in a race to the car. Toying with the regular rules and dynamics that govern kids' lives helps them to gain an awareness and appreciation of their own capabilities. And by occasionally undermining your omnipotence, you can give your children room to step up and achieve and/or recognize their mastery. This is constructive "lying." It fosters kids' understanding, helps them feel independent, and builds their self-confidence.
But lying to your kids when they're not in on the joke? That's a different story. And it's one that seems to be reaching epidemic proportions among contemporary parents. The hot iced beverage, the sleeping media center, and the Guggenheim F.A.O. Schwarz are only three examples. Pretty much every parent I talk to has some regular lies they tell their child. One tells her daughter that the ice cream van that parks by their playground is a "music truck" there to entertain them with its monotonous song. Another tells his son that the gumball machine in the diner they eat at every weekend doesn't work on Sundays. In an intriguing twist on feminism, a wonderful mom I know was so invested in fostering her young daughter's gender pride that she pretended to be a Hillary supporter for the whole primary campaign. Though she was firmly in the Obama camp, whenever Mrs. Clinton won a state contest or showed up on TV, this mom would do a fist-bump with her daughter and they'd shout, "Girl Power!"
©2008 Brett Berk and Nerve Media
About the Author
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