I really wish that people would just tell me when I’m wrong. Instead, they pussyfoot around, afraid to hurt my feelings. “Well, consider this… maybe if you think about it in another way… well, you have a point, but…”
Then, six months later: “You’ve been wrong this whole time!”
Well, tell me, would ya? I’m dense. I don’t catch on to your hinting. Just say: You’re wrong.
Thanks again for all the good advice.
One point that hasn’t been addressed in how this (the spider thing) all played out. I made my assertion that I thought it was a myth, but I did not instantly pull out my phone to prove my point. It was only AFTER i was told I was wrong and why can’t I just admit it that I felt the need to defend my statement (I stated this in the OP, feel free to re-read).
I freely admit that I can be a bit of a “know-it-all” and I know from experience how annoying that can be, and I have to admit that many times that is the case with me. However, IN THIS INSTANCE, is this a case of annoying know-it-all behavior? I think they may have been reacting to my past behavior more so than what I actually said or did here.
yeah, the problem is that you’re arguing with teenagers. 12 year olds think they know everything; 18 year olds know they know everything.
That’s how a lot of behavior is though. I could say the exact same thing as someone else, with the exact same emphasis and tone, but the other person could be heard as sincere and I could be heard as sarcastic. And I know that I’m not being sarcastic in that instance and I’m being perfectly sincere, and they are just hearing me wrong because of my past behavior, but that would indicate that I’m apparently sarcastic too often. So even if you were 100% not a know-it-all in that instance, if everyone else heard you as a know-it-all then, it seems to indicate that in the past you have tended to be a bit of one.
Was the 12-year old actually trying to pass off the "a statue fell on him line as a fact, or was it a joke? Sometimes, making something up when you don’t know the answer makes you look cool and funny, not stupid. 
That’s a good attitude, but not everybody feels that way. I’ve found most people don’t like to be told they’re wrong, and especially not in front of other people. And parent/child relationships during the child’s school years can be pretty tricky too. Not only that, but there are people who will tell people they’re wrong when they’re not. Sometimes what people say can be interpreted to be wrong, but there are other interpretations, or what they’ve said is wrong but it’s not what they meant to say. And then there are those who think the only right answer is the one taken word for word from some textbook. So considering all the ways people can be wrong or right, or both, and people who are sensitive to having their mistakes pointed out, the world is a better place if people hesitate a bit before correcting others, or at least finesse it to some degree.
But if you really like being told you are wrong all you have to do is keep posting on the SDMB and you won’t be disappointed 
Other people aren’t really gonna remember if you were wrong or right, they’re just gonna remember how you made them feel.
Well, then *they *are wrong. None of us are perfect. Then I correct them back. Then we have a pillow fight, before moving to the hot tub. 
I can’t be certain, as I said I didn’t hear him directly, its what he told me afterwards. Nothing about what he said or how he said it suggested to me he was trying to “be cool”. He has a problem with lying in general and often asserts that he knows things that he does not. I think he didn’t know, didn’t want to admit it and believed that no one would possibly know he was lying (after all, who could know more about Leonardo than he who had just read a 6th grade level biography about him?).
Dealing with him is a whole separate issue. A couple weeks ago he asserted that Abraham Lincoln was the tallest president ever. I said “oh, yeah… how tall was he?”. Instead of saying “you know, I don’t know exactly” he blurts out confidently “7 foot 8”. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing, and I’m sure that hurt his feelings, but come on. He seemed hurt that I didn’t believe him, but how could I?
ETA: for the record, I did apologize and suggest he look up Lincoln’s true height, which he declined to do (I did, he was 6"4"). Ignorance I can handle. WILLFUL ignorance I have a problem with.
He wasn’t lying, really. He just doesn’t know yet what to do when confronted with gaps in his knowledge. Lincoln was the tallest president! What a cool fact to share with an adult! Dude, turtles, you are so lucky to have a kid in your life who wants to share stuff like that with you.
Look man, your job is not to teach him which spider is the most poisonous (or venomous, actually) or how da Vinci died (Leonardo, since we’re being pedantic Dopers) or how tall Lincoln was (6 ft 4 in, but a lot taller with that hat which was the whole point of the silly thing). As we’ve already established, the internet can do that just fine.
Your job is to raise two learners. Your job is to instill within them a fundamental appreciation for the act of learning itself.
So when your kids are coming at you with incorrect assumptions, you need to turn off the part of your brain that is irritated because they’re wrong and get excited for them, because they are engaging with you! In that moment, you hold a piece of their future in your hands and your actions will ripple for a long, long way.
Same thing goes for the da Vinci thing. You called him out on the lie, sure, but you also might have had a good laugh about how funny it was. I mean, honestly, it’s a really clever bit of extemporizing for a 12-year-old. Have your laugh and then sit down together and find out how he really died. Then, once he’s gotten it, you can explain to him why it’s okay to not know something, just so long as you’re willing to go back and learn about it later on. He didn’t feel bad because he didn’t know it, man, he felt bad because you made him feel like the gap in his knowledge invalidated the rest of his project.
Facts are easy. Learning, really learning, that’s harder.
But to answer your original question: you’re not a jerk. You’re a pedant. But take my advice: save the pedantry for the Dope (where it’s a virtue) and be a little gentler with the kids.
Yes, I believe your prior history of acting know-it-allish has tainted how they perceive you. I wouldn’t be surprised if their guard instantly goes up every time they want to make a factual assertion in your presence. This results in one of two things. Either they end up clamming up because it’s not worth the risk of shame and embarrassment. Or they speak then dig in their heels no matter how wrong they are, because giving you the pleasure of being right seemingly comes at the expense of their ego.
It seems your kids like put a lot of value on being knowledgeable, just as you do. They just lack the knowledge they think they have, and so either find themselves BS’ing stuff or clinging to anything that supports their half-baked beliefs. Could this be typical kid immaturity? Yup. Could it also be the product of being raised to think that gaining respect means being a master know-it-all? Yup.
Not a jerk, but just pick your battles and don’t correct every little thing. When you do, correct factually and leave it alone, even if they retort.
I TOTALLY expect that some time next week when Gatopescado posts in some other thread, Turtlescanfly will zoom in behind him and ask,
“…So, do you know how old my kids were when I married their mother yet…?” 
I guess my question would be, exactly whom were you trying to impress, and was the dress code (Friday or not) in conformity with whatever would impress them?
I don’t know how the Casual Friday thing works. If I’m a lawyer and I have to appear in court on a Friday, does the judge give me a pass in a golf shirt and Nikes? If the dress code is to set a standard of comportment that meets quality control in a business environment, is the whole world supposed to accept a Friday exemption and accept a product that is out of tolerance?
turtlescanfly, if you only absorb one reply in this thread, absorb this one. ^^^
OP reminds me of myself, for much of my life. Fortunately, my kids came late in my life and I’ve mellowed a bit.
Knowledge of whether daddy-longlegs are poisonous and how Leonardo died rank relatively low among life’s priorities. Building children’s confidence and family comaraderie are far more important.
Be that as it may, it does children no good to teach them that there are no consequences for making up shit out of the blue.
The OP should perhaps, as others have suggested, have worded himself slightly differently, but it is absolutely vital to teach children that not knowing something is not a weakness, and that the correct response to not knowing something is acknowledging your lack of knowledge (and ideally, working to correct this) rather than pulling something out of your ass and hoping nobody calls your bluff.
It is, in fact, of the highest importance that this be taught within the safe and nurturing confines of a family, because the rest of the world can not be expected to show any leniency or sympathy when you try to bullshit it.
People should develop a sense of what they do know, and what they don’t. If you don’t know, keep your mouth shut. What happens is people only remember the times when you did know, and are oblivious to the zillion things you didn’t know, because you kept your mouth shut. That becomes “why do you always have to be right?” Well, I’m not always right, I just don’t lie when I don’t know. You only hear the times I’m right.
You’re a Trump supporter, ain’cha?
I don’t think you’re a jerk. If you’re right, you’re right. At the risk of hijack, I spent a couple of years loudly proclaiming (or vehemently in the case where I was doing it via print) to a bunch of people that Mary Schmich wrote a certain graduation speech that started out “Wear your sunscreen,” often attributed to a much more famous writer, who sure didn’t need the publicity. Because it was a great piece and Schmich should get the credit. And did people argue with me? Yes they did. Did they think I was a jerk? Probably. Am I? Maybe, but not for that. I have no idea how so many people got that wrong but even less why they didn’t want to believe me. (The people corrected include quite a few of my family members, but I didn’t limit it to that; I corrected total strangers who linked to it on the Internet. Just being helpful and getting to the truth, people.)
Now you can be right and also be a jerk, but sheesh.
When I got things from my kids’ school with words misspelled on them, I circled them in red and sent them back (wait, but only if it was something I as a parent had to sign and send back anyway). On one hand I feel this was kind of jerkish. On the other, these people are supposed to be educators, and I expect them to know if they can’t spell something and to get someone to proofread it who does know how to spell. If it’s not an important thing to know, why are they giving my kids spelling tests?