China Guy’s story reminds me of something. Despite being the only one who would tell Baby Sis about dying granny, there were still questions I wouldn’t answer from her; I always told her to wait till she was 18. Well, lo and behold–on her 18th birthday she presented me with a 2-page list she’d been keeping since she was 10! 
My son was 2 when he busted me taking him to daycare on a my day off. (My daycare arrangement required me to take him on certain days, regardless of my work schedule.) He was barely verbal, but he saw me in jeans and grabbing his daycare packsack and spread-eagled himself on the floor. “Mommy no work clothes!” I wasn’t sure if he was upset i was not wearing my uniform, or he understood I wasn’t going to work, so he shouldn’t go to daycare. I did an “oh silly me” and changed into scrubs.
I have been pretty careful about being less than honest with him ever since. Yes, I did get dressed in my nursing scrubs to take him to school on subsequent days off. They were pretty rare, because I generally picked up over time any chance I could get.
Now I generally tell him the truth, or an age appropriate version of that. If need be, “I will tell you when you are older” used as a last resort.
I did tell him about Santa and the Tooth Fairy, because it was all around him. My partner’s dad was the town Santa, so he convinced my son that this was a very real Santa for a few years. Now my son is a jaded 11-year-old, and he is very protective of the “Santa Conspiracy”. He is the peer helper in the kindergarten lunchroom and won’t let anyone disillusion “his little buddies.”
My dad found out at age 70 his stepfather had been previously married. His mother was widowed in WWII and remarried when dad was 13. Maybe in those days you didn’t tell 13 year olds that your mother’s new husband had been married before, but maybe in the intervening 57 years someone might have told him? If not his mother, one of his aunts maybe? He found my grandfather’s divorce papers both had passed on. The reason was infidelity and had actually happened and was finalized long before my grandparents had met. When my brother found out he was somewhat upset that anyone would cheat on our Grandpa.
I am not aware of being lied to by my parents except the santa thing. I come across family stories now and again that weren’t things you told small children (ie Auntie X ran off with another man on Christmas Day) and by the time I was old enough it wasn’t relevant. So I found that out when I got to know my cousin much later in life…My mom said “well I didn’t know it was Christmas Day, exactly, and you were 5.” Fair enough, but it would have explained a few things had I known. I make a point of telling that cousin a lot of the family stories and secrets because she doesn’t really have any connection to her maternal side.
It’s never too early to talk to your children about wildlife preserves.
My parents and grandparents hid the fact that my grandparents regularly served up rabbit for dinner until I was a teenager. I guess they were worried that my sister and I wouldn’t eat it, so they shredded it up and said it was chicken. They also got round the fact that we didn’t like cauliflower by calling it March flower, which obviously tasted better 
This reminds me of something my mom told me about her own parents. When she was a kid, she won a rabbit as a prize at some fair or carnival or something.
One day the rabbit disappeared and her mother told her that it must have run away.
This was in the Depression era … so y’all can guess the rest …
“Toys that grownups like, things like fancy TVs and video games and stuff”.
He seemed to buy it (whew!). I mean, I don’t love lying to a 6 year old but he just didn’t have the knowledge to comprehend even the beginning of what it meant.
When I was about 4 we had a pet rabbit who lived in a big pen in our enclosed back porch. We came home one day to find him dead. My parents told me that he got out and fell down the basement stairs and broke his neck. Years later, when I was grown-up, my dad admitted that they found the rabbit dead in his pen and the theory was that a stray cat had got in to that back porch and frightened him to death. They told me the broken neck story because I loved cats and they didn’t want me to think that one was responsible for the death of our rabbit.
My Dad lied to us a lot during my and my siblings childhood about our financial situation. He didn’t want us to be afraid that we were going to be evicted or not have food, etc.
When my parents announced that they were getting a divorce when I was 11 it came as a complete shock to me because I never saw them fight. The very occassional argument maybe, but nothing that would precede a divorce. Turns out they had agreed to never fight in front of me because they didn’t want to upset me or have me deal with living with parents who fought all the time. Which they felt was the best for me.
The problem with that was when I grew up I had no idea that you can have a disagreement, argument or fight with your significant other, work it out, and be okay again. I know that’s why I stayed in two unhealthy relationships too long - because in my mind the first argument means the relationship is over. I didn’t get married until I was in my 30’s and it wasn’t until I met my husband that I began to understand what a healthy relationship is: that you can disagree with your spouse and you can work through that disagreement rather than immediately break up.
Wow. My parents did not divorce, but I also never, and I mean NEVER, saw them argue and it had the same impact on me.
Fortunately, I was able to learn that you can be angry with someone and still love them in time to have a reasonably good marriage. (We just celebrated our 50th anniversary last summer.)
Unfortunately, I never asked my mother about this before she died, but years later I did ask my dad how come we never heard them arguing. “There was no need to argue,” he said. “She was always right.” I think he meant this seriously, not as a criticism. I do remember times when he started to do or say something and she would say, “Now, <dad’s name>…” and he would change course.
bwahahahahahahaha
Ah, my family, especially my mother, have been pulling this shit on me since one of my earliest memories through to about three or so years ago? (I’m nearly 50 now).
5 year old Miss Boods needs a tonsillectomy? Do’nt bother to tell her – just get all excited about going on a trip over to the neighbouring city, arriving at the hospital, and surprise! (And the current Mr Boods wonders why to this day I avoid doctors and medical stuff like the plague, to coin a phrase).
Hey, 7 year old Miss Boods – mom’s picking you up today from school as a treat [instead of taking the bus]! That’s because you’re going to the dentist to have a tooth pulled!
12 years old – gotta go have some ‘special xrays’ taken at the dentist…er, I guess that’s another way to describe having a full set of braces put on.
Why’s mom been away on her trip to see her family for so long? Oh, no wait, he he he, she’s having surgery on what be an aneurysm building up behind her eye, surgery that she might not survive (I was in high school at the time).
Sister-in-law diagnosed with and then dying from ovarian cancer in the space of a year? Tell uni-aged Ms Boods that Mary is ‘angry’ with her and no longer wants to see her again, so stay out of her way, don’t call her on the phone, go to your room when she comes to the house. Years later I saw the diary Mary kept while she was ill, and she was hurt and puzzled that I was being such a teenaged brat and never talking to her and avoiding her during all that time. Goddamit.
And on and on and on, including family illnesses and other things that had an impact on me – why in the name of fuck my mother/parents thought it was better to keep me in the dark about family illnesses, my own medical treatments [especially when it was more or less mundane stuff that, due to the shock and fear consequently from the surprise left me phobic about doctors, injections, dentistry, etc], family plans, fuck only knows.
The absolutely most aggravating was about five years ago, when my dad died, and my mother begged me to move in with her because she’d never lived alone, didn’t want to live alone, and would feel ever so much better if I lived with her in that big rattle-trap of a house she had. I gave up a really good apartment, my independence, blah blah, – willingly, to look after her and to be a companion to her, all the while trying to work a full time job – only to find out that even prior to my move-in that she’d bought a house in Florida and was planning to move out of state and that the family house was already for sale through a private listing.
I found out about it from a complete stranger (to me) who’d come over to the house to drop something for my brother – you have to picture me standing in the side yard, mid-40ish, professional woman, having a chat with this guy while his partner unloaded gear from their van, with my 80ish mother racing out of the house in alarm, screaming my name as if she were on fire – because she was trying to get me away from this guy before he let it slip that she was upping sticks and moving 1000 miles away, leaving me scrambling for a place to live at a moment’s notice (she wasn’t planning to tell me until the absolutely last minute.)
The only reason I have ever got in explanation for all of this shit: ‘We didn’t want to deal with you being upset when you learned about the hospital/the dentist/the move/the whatever.’
Charming.
I remember my parents telling me “it won’t hurt” or “it won’t be that bad” before various trips to the dentist or for minor surgery. It typically was worse than I think they were promising, but it was necessary - so lying made it happen with less fuss.
Just remembering soemthing.
I’m all for being truthful with my son now, BUT… when he was little, I did try to shield him from unpleasant things. Until he was 7 or so, he thought ***Finding Nemo *** started on the first day of school, because I always skipped past the part where his Mommy got eaten by the barracuda.
Good on you. I saw FN in theaters with my favorite niece. There was a couple there with a kid of 2 or so who was absolutely terrified by the barracuda scene, and her parents refused to take her out despite her hysterical weeping. Bastards.:mad:
Oh, I do that, too! That opening scene is just too scary/sad for my four and six year-olds.
I also hide/deceive my kids about how I feel about their father (or at least I try really hard to.) We’ve been separated a little over two years (divorce final any day now, hopefully…) and I have never once let a negative word about him pass my lips within their hearing. There are days I hate him with the heat of a thousand suns, but those are the days when I deliberately try to say something nice about him.
Of course, that’s probably screwing them up in some other way I’m not aware of. Is there any way to NOT emotionally damage your kids at some point, in some way?
I disbelieve that your being kind and generous about your ex is harmful to your kids. Unless he is is abusive, the only lesson you are teaching them is that a parent should place his or her kids’ wellbeing over his or her anger. Hard to see that as bad.
When I was very little we would road-trip about 3 hours to visit my grandparents. My mom would always give me half a Gravol “so you don’t get car sick.” Which I never understood because I’ve never been car sick in my life. When I was 22 I had a brutal stomach flu and took Gravol. I called my mom later and said “This Gravol knocks me out. If I take a full pill I’m asleep for 4 hours and if I take a half pill I’m asleep for 2 hours.” My mom said:
“Heh. Why do you think I always gave it to you before road trips.”
…which explained why I remember always waking up about an hour away from our destination. 
I suppose if you count bluffing as lying, I do it to them all the time 
Thing is, sometimes I’m bluffing… sometimes not.
The biggest lie I lived as a kid, was the extent of the alcoholism in my Dad, his friends, and his family.
My Mom always made excuses, deflected, or distracted us from how big of a problem it really was. Now his family and friends are all dead and dad has descended into severe alcoholism and been in and out of rehab.
I look back at my childhood with a completely different perspective of a lot of events.
Most of these stories involve the kids eventually finding out about the lies and ending up worse off… I’ll try to give a few that shouldn’t result in bad consequences down the line:
I often tell misleading lies to get my younger daughter (2) to eat her supper. I know she’ going to say she doesn’t like whatever we give her, and insist on just drinking juice or running around instead. So it’s a series of little lies…
“here just try this one bite of potato…” (I’m actually planning on tricking her into eating most of it)
“ok now try this green bean” (wait didn’t I just imply she only had to try the potato?)
“here eat the food off your fork so I can get you a bite of something you like” (as if I couldn’t just dump it off)
“ok you eat the rest while I go get you some milk” (she doesn’t really have to take another bite - I’m getting her milk anyway)
“if you want to eat desert you have to finish your other food” (no, that desert is perishable and I’m giving it to you regardless)…
and so on and so on. Mostly all lies, designed to get her to eat and not be grouchy for the rest of the night, which won’t traumatize her later in life. After she grows out of this phase I won’t need to use these lines anymore (don’t need to with out 7 year old), and she’ll probably forget all about them. There are a ton of them… “go find mom she needs your help” (translation: you’re annoying me go bug someone else).“here help me carry this heavy thing”(that I’m perfectly capable of moving myself with no help), “what a beautiful drawing” (of scribbles on crumpled paper that’s going into the garbage in 5 minutes), “thank you you’re such a big help” (actually you slowed me down and made me late for work)… You really can’t be 100% honest with little kids who aren’t capable of understanding things from an adults perspective so you be nice to them with little lies until they devellop the maturity to handle the truth better.
Actually, I remember my Mom’s “lies” because she was so far off the mark!
I was a very fussy kid who hated vegetables and just about every other healthful food. My Mom told me countless times that I would never grow if I didn’t eat the broccoli she’d cooked for me.
I never ate the veggies, and am 6’4"