Nonsense Ramblings (Parents Lie to Their Kids)

I can't seem to be able to put any coherent thoughts together to make a perfectly sensible post lately. That's why my blog has been sitting here post-less. I guess I can say I have completely come to a hump in my blog writing. It's not that I don't have things I want to write...I have loads of thoughts and things I want to write about, I just can't seem to organize them well. I wonder if that is hint of some form for me. Maybe I do need to organize my life or my home so that my thoughts can get organized too, uh?

So, I was watching "Malcolm in the Middle" the other day and it got me thinking about something. The mom in the show was trying to get the youngest son to get rid of his teddy, he's had it since he was a baby and to her he was too old to keep cuddling up with a stuff toy. And of course, the teddy has been used so much it's practically in rags. The mom used all kinds of clever ways she can think of to get the son to throw that teddy away but to no avail. She even threatened him, bribed him but nothing worked. Finally she sat him down and told him that she needed to wash the teddy because the stuffed toy is soooo dirty it's loaded with germs. And if the son doesn't let her wash the teddy, he would get all those germs on him and get sick and die.

That freaked the son out and he finally relented. The mom was happy because she now was able to get rid of the teddy. But her plan backfired on her because now her son has taken her germs-causing-sickness-that-would-make-him-die ploy seriously that he practically doesn't want to leave the house anymore to avoid any contact with anything that would pass germs on to him. He even wrapped himself up with plastic covers from head to toe and every time he come across anything on the floor, bugs or anything else that moves, he freaked out. Now the mom has another problem on her hands..how to get her son to stop being so scared of getting sick that he avoided pretty much everything. Anyways, it was gross because he saw something black on the floor and he freaked out big time so his mom came in and picked it up off the floor and told him it was only raisin. He didn't believe her, said it was a bug and so to prove it to him that it's an harmless raisin, she put the thing in her mouth and chewed it up and swallowed it. That snapped him out of his phobia.. it was actually a bug but of course there was no way the mom was going to tell her son that.

Anyways, that got me thinking....parents do lie to their kids. It's sad but true. We, parents, spend our days raising our kids and instilling honesty in our kids but yet we do lie to them, I would say all.the.time. I know there are reasons we lie to kids, most of the time we lie to protect our kids. As a kid, I always believed anything my parents told me. I found out as I grow older that most of the things they told me were not actually true. Like for example, they told me that if I ever said a bad word, my mouth would grow some fungus on it and fall off. (Yeah, I know, you're laughing at me and thinking how gullible I was to believe it.) I did believe them, kept me from ever saying a swear word even though there were times I wanted to badly..LOL. Of course I know that wasn't true, it was just their way of keeping me from swearing.

And Santa Clause...we all know every parents tell their kids that Santa Clause is real, the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny are all real. Keeps the kids on good behavior. How about the monster under the bed? My hubby even told me how his grandmother would keep him and his siblings in line when they visit her by telling them that there's a monster that comes out to swallow up kids when they misbehave. My mom has told me that too...especially if I wanted to play with my cousins {who live right across the road from me} at night that a monster comes out to snatch up little girls and eat them for dinner just so I make sure I'm inside the house as soon as the sun sets. (Yep, I learned that wasn't true as soon I got older and tested that theory out.) I was a really naive kid so I totally believed anything my parents told me or any adult told me. I realized as I got older, those were just their technique to make me behave and obey them. I could go on and on but it would be too embarrassing, you know..LOL.

So, now I'm a parent and I try to do that...darn kids of mine are too smart for their own good. They never believed any of those things. Ok, yes, I did tell them Santa Clause is real and they did believe it for a while and actually figured it out when they get to a certain age. I am just glad that the older kids were nice enough not to make me and hubby look like total liars by telling the younger kids that Santa Clause is sooo not real and that Santa Clause is actually Daddy, that's why mommy was kissing Santa Clause under the mistletoe...And that the reason that mommy seem to be always tired and sleepy on Christmas morn was because since she was Santa's helper and that her Santa is a procrastinator so he usually procrastinate his Christmas shopping til the night before Christmas to do shopping and make his helper stay up all night wrapping gazillions of presents. And that when the tooth fairy stumbles around in the dark to leave a dollar bill under the pillow to replace the detached tooth, he most likely would make a mistake and leave a five dollar bill instead of a dollar bill and that when there are more than one tooth waiting under the pillows, coincidentally daddy would come home for lunch the next day because he's lost all his money under those pillows that night before playing tooth fairy...

So, tell me..if I lie for the benefit of my kids or to teach them something, does that make it ok? Aren't I breaking one of the commandments about lying? If most of a parenting teaching method revolves around lying, why do we then punish our kids for lying?

See, I told you guys, my thoughts are totally jumbled up. I'm just trying to get rid of them so I can make rooms for other thoughts who's trying to make their way in...LOL.