Ah, the Noodle Incident is finally revealed!
When my son was around 8 or so, he asked me what pimentos were, those little red things they stick in olives. I told him they were worms. He was appalled and wasn’t sure whether to believe me. He ran over to my wife, who unbeknownst to him had overheard our conversation. He start to ask “you know those red things in olives…” and she immediately responded “Worms”. He screamed “No they’re not!” I’m not sure if he ever actually believed it, but to this day, 30 years later, he remembers the “Pimento Worm” incident.
Why do people do this? There are so many instances here, and to me it seems cruel: taking advantage of someone’s ignorance. On the other hand, I don’t really think people are mocking their children or being mean to them. I guess I don’t see what the benefit is for the child of being led to believe something ridiculous, even for a short time.
Sorry to be a spoilsport, and I’m not trying to single you out in particular: there’s dozens of examples in this thread. I’m sometimes excessively literal-minded, so maybe I just don’t get the humor.
Well, sometimes the lies parents tell kids are helpful. My friend SD told me he wasn’t scared of needles, because when he was 5, he had to have his blood drawn (forgot why). At the hospital, his dad told him, “Son, they’re going to draw your blood. If it’s red, it means you’re human. If it’s green, it means you’re a Martian.”
So SD looked at the hypo with anticipation and saw that his blood was red. At an early age, he was a Sci Fi nerd, and his dad caught on to that and knew how to use it to their advantage.
This.
IMO, it’s healthy. It helps develop a sense of humor and skeptical awareness that not everything others say, especially adults is true.
Here’s super cute baby being taught that everything adults say isn’t a good thing: [Official] Mom Teaches Cute Korean baby Yebin a Life Lesson - YouTube
When I was little my uncle John Paul worked in the hospitality industry in Las Vegas. He usually worked as a maître d’ or as a chef of the theatrical variety, the kind who would apply the finishing touches to your fancy dish tableside. His particular specialty was flambé cooking. I still vividly remember going to visit uncle John and going to an extremely fancy restaurant and John Paul serving us a baked Alaska. I thought he was the coolest person on the planet. (Uncle John was also really handsome and extremely charismatic. A showman through and through.)
As I got into later childhood Uncle John was having tough times. He was always asking family for money and was usually either homeless or living in bad situations. My memories of him were still of the movie-star-looking guy in the tuxedo setting fire to a dessert for us in a beautiful restaurant, so I asked my grandma, John Paul’s mother, “why doesn’t Uncle John work at the hotel anymore?” Nanny said:
“Las Vegas made flambé cooking illegal because it’s too dangerous to do indoors, so John Paul lost his job.”
I believed that until my late twenties. I was talking about those early memories with my siblings, who stared at me (their wise and brilliant eldest sister) like I was some kind of total putz. “Sam,” says my little sister, “Uncle John was on heroin.”
I feel the same way. I never lied to my siblings, I never lied to my daughter either. Although I did make a lot of things up. The difference was that she was in on the joke. For example, the ratbugs that nested in her hair when she refused to let me comb it. Or that the reason I was so much wiser than her was because I was a salmon.
That’s just silly. He was incinerated.
When my brother and I were little, mom made a batch of vegetable-beef soup and we were turning our noses up at it, poking at the fat floating on top and asking what it was. “It’s protein. Shut up and eat it.”
It’s quite possible to do that without teaching kids that they can’t trust their parents.
‘Don’t believe everything you read or hear; some people will lie to you, either for advantage or because they think it’s funny’ is a very different message from ‘don’t believe anything that I, your parent/teacher/etc., tell you.’
And it’s perfectly possible to fantasize with children in a fashion clearly distinct from getting them to believe things the trusted person knows to be false.
That’s true. I recall his name being Charlie Brown. It knocked all his clothes off too.
A lot of people seem to think that kids don’t know how to lie. Sure. Just ask them who spilled the grape juice on the white carpet.
Around grade 4 or 5, there was a guy in our group that lied about everything. Didn’t matter what it was, didn’t matter if we were all standing right there when it happened, he lied. Being really clever, we called him Liar rather than his name of Victor. He was still our friend tho.
One important thing I learned is never to ask a question when you’re actually making an accusation. You’re just begging a child to lie when you back them into a corner like that.
Before I had kids, I thought I would feed them a few lies and see what stuck, mostly for my amusement.
After I had kids my amusement was the actual facts that they recall. My 5 year old son knows what coprolite is (fossilised dinosaur poo - trifecta for young boys) after I told him about it when he was three. It is actually much more entertaining feeding them facts, and seeing what sticks.
The only lie I can recall telling them is that I am not ticklish - and that is for self preservation.
I used to know a pathological liar who dated a Russian princess, worked for the UN, was contracted to Mossad… endless impossible lies.
I get that you changed your mind about this, but I cannot understand having the impulse to begin with. Ha ha, it’s so funny to take advantage of the ignorance of people who rely wholly upon you for guidance, hoping to shame and humiliate them. Never saw how this is fundamentally different than cruelty. What does it teach but to turn about and humiliate someone else in a vulnerable position, and to lie for one’s own amusement or benefit? Ugh. But then I don’t think practical jokes – same impulse – are amusing in any way either.
The pleasure, it seems to me, resides in the feeling of power over someone. I imagine that this is also the foundational reason for pathological liars’ behavior as well. To manipulate the feelings and beliefs of others – perhaps those chronic liars become addicted to that power rush and cannot stop themselves even when it’s clearly not to their benefit. Which I suppose could be said about any addiction.
I think this is correct.
Once I had actual power over people I loved, I chose not to weild it. It seemed so petty to be fooling people who would take my word for granted, as the absolute truth.
So I do the opposite and feed them facts. In exchange they feed me facts that they learn at school or from educational TV.
It is a healthier outcome for both myself and my children. Plus I get to learn stuff… mostly about dinosaurs. And poo.
I love this! I think I will try it with my own four-year-old. (Currently the only time I “lie” to him is when he asks “what is in the package?”. Sometimes I tell him it is a box of spiders, which he knows is a lie so I’m not sure that counts.)
Best of luck to you and your family. 
The brother of an ex-girlfriend of mine is a braggart, likes to do pranks and play practical jokes on people all the time. He also lies a lot, but mostly not blatant lies, but exaggerations that have a kernel of truth and let him look good. Two examples: he, my girlfriend and I were at a party when I had just started college. He introduced us to a friend and told him “This is my brother in law EinsteinsHund. He’s an electrical engineer.” Note that I was only his sister’s boyfriend and we were neither married nor engaged, but I let that slip because many people don’t care much about the difference here, but of course I immediately protested “Well, actually I only just started first semester.”
The other time he pulled off something like that was at another party when he introduced his wife, who was a cosmetologist, to some people “This is my wife. She’s a dermatologist.” My girlfriend and I sat right next to him and were stunned, but we didn’t correct him because we didn’t want to make an awkward scene. But his chutzpah was staggering. And he’s a fucking police officer by trade!
I have no dog in this fight but I’m curious if you feel the same way about Santa, Easter bunny etc. I was told santa was a lie from a young age because my newly religious parents thought it was sinful. Guess big scary man in the sky who can read your mind and send you to hell were ok though…
I always wondered what it would have been like to believe in Santa.
Santa and the Easter Bunny specifically: I’m Christian and loathe the commercialization/infantilization of Christian holidays, frankly. Christmas was about the Christ Child, and Easter was about the death and resurrection of Jesus. We celebrated Epiphany with small presents, hung stockings, and had a Christmas Day present-opening but there wasn’t a Santa involved. However, there was a tooth fairy. My daughter, I’m fairly sure, never thought the tooth fairy was a real fairy, though.
Yeah. I was quite a literal kid (I objected to the word “kid” in that sense; I was not a baby goat, I was a child!); but I knew perfectly well that my father had made up the Ishky Bow Wows, who were very very tall but had no width at all. When the kid knows it’s made up, that’s something else entirely.
I liked it. It was fun. Finding out was no big deal and usually treated as being part of the “Big kids club” and a rite of passage. My kids liked it, my nephews liked it. I base this on their desire to still play into the myth and have presents addressed from Santa, etc even after the youngest had figured it out. Granted, we all pretty much figured it out on our own versus being told by bullies on the playground or something.
I know some people say that finding out was the Ultimate Betrayal and they could never trust their parents again, etc but that hasn’t been my experience with anyone I’ve known (that I’ve talked Santa with). It’s a big world though so I assume someone has felt that way but I think it’s generally a fun and positive experience.
That said, I think there’s some significant difference between telling a story to fill a kid’s season with a sense of magic and whimsy versus telling them a story to just jerk them around about how the toilet is gasoline powered or every fifth president has to be born in July by law.