Photo: Sheri Segal Glick
Most people don?t go into parenthood expecting to lie to their kids, but sometimes withholding the truth or engaging in a handy bit of subterfuge becomes a necessary strategy. Those little evasions and fabrications are what help us get through the day. There are the lies that almost everyone tells (the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy), the lies that some people tell (that very, very old dogs enjoy their retirement on farms) and the lies that just make life better for your particular family.
For instance, I once listened to a podcast where a woman revealed that she had chicken for dinner every night for her entire childhood. It wasn?t until she went to university that she found out that people eat things other than chicken for dinner. It never occurred to her to question her mother?s judgment, and it never came up in conversation. As listeners, I suspect that we were supposed to sympathize with the daughter, but it was hard not to think about her mother?s genius. By my calculations, she must have saved at least four hours a week (taking into account the time saved on food shopping, food prep and recipe perusal), which works out to a whopping 208 hours each year. That poor woman was probably petrified whenever one of her kids was invited to a sleepover for fear that the truth might be revealed and the gig would be up. This got me thinking about all the things I tell my kids to make my life easier. There are a lot of things that I don?t want my kids to ...