B.B. has an unsettling habit. He lies. He's only three & I am working hard to instill a sense of honesty in him. But the child has a tendency to get into massive trouble frequently. Until recently he gave himself up with great regularity. If a gigantic mess had been made & I asked who made it, he normally said, "I did, Mom!"
In the past few weeks, that has changed. He begins with, "Not me!" or the ever popular, "I don't know." But when asked point blank, eye to eye if he did something he shouldn't have, he crafts an elaborate story. Many times green coyotes have been blamed for the mess in his bed room. For quite a few days he passed the buck to an imaginary friend. There have been tornadoes and stampedes. There have been supervillans & heroes. Last night an inanimate object went shopping.
Husband found the telephone stashed in the refrigerator. He blamed me...yes, you read that right, he thought I did it! The man is seriously lacking in mental prowess sometimes, I tell ya. I insisted that I had put the phone on the kitchen island, not the fridge.
You were the last one to have it. You were talking on the phone while you were making dinner. You stuck it in the fridge!
NO. I. DID. NOT.
Yes you did.
No I didn't! I was making chili & grilled cheese while talking to Princess. I hung up the phone & put it on the island & went back to flip the grilled cheese. I never got in the fridge.
Then how did it get in there?
My guess? B.B. put it there. He's the one with a penchant for putting things in the fridge. (I've opened it MANY times to find Spider-Man staring me in the face...or a pair of socks...or Buzz Lightyear of Starfleet Command...or a note pad & pencil. You can never be sure what he's going to think needs cooling off.)
Come on, just admit you did it!
Argh!!! I did not!!! B.B. Did you put the phone in the fridge?
No. I didn't do it.
Then how did it get in there?
I don't know.
B.B. Look at Mama. Look at my eyes. How did the phone get in the fridge?
It walked in there.
Really? Where did it get feet to walk with?
At the grocery store. Yeah, it went to da store & bought some feet & den it walked & got in da fridge.
Oh dear. Today he and I had a long talk about what lying is if it's a good idea or not. Then I asked him again about the phone. This time he said, "No, I didn't put it in dere. I did dat the other day when it was dark! I didn't do it now!"
Hopefully something has sunk in. Tonight when confronted with misbehavior it only took a gentle reminder to get the truth.
BTW, spell check is working again!! Huzzah!!
3 comments:
It's supposedly normal for kids to go through a faze where they experiment with the truth. Normal maybe. Annoying, yes. Good luck! We're working on it too.
I know I shouldn't laugh, but the phone buying feet at the grocery store kind of cracked me up.
My husband would have blamed me, too. Only he would have been right.
Well, if I'd only known that things could go to the store and buy feet, my childhood would have been ever so much easier!!!
I'm praying that this is just a phase of testing boundaries, and that this is NOT the beginning of the ability to deceive. Supposedly, children don't learn how to do that until the age of 5...so says the Discovery Channel anyway...
Here's hoping that B.B. is getting the understanding of telling the truth, using the imagination, and outright lying...
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