Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire

One afternoon last week I decided to be nice to my children and give them each a sweet.

It’s a pretty big deal to get sweets in our house, mostly because they already have so much outside of our house (at school and granny) that we have to keep it to a minimum.  Sad but true.  This whole thing has become a joke already.  They’ll come to me and start off their sentence like, “Let me guess, you’re going to say no, but I really want to have a cupcake for breakfast.”.  They play on the guilt trip.  But I still have to say no.

But anyway, the point here is not about how I consistently deprive them, it’s how this time I didn’t!

Knox was gifted a big tub of Woolies gummy sweets for his birthday – sharks, snakes and hearts.  I really wanted one, so I opened it and gave them all one too.  Two of them were busy in the bedroom and while one was messing around in the lounge.  They’re pretty good about giving their spoils to each other, mumbling things like, ‘Moms being nice today, here’s your sweet” or “Quick eat it before she changes her mind!“.

The two in the room devoured this in seconds.  I don’t even think they chewed it.  But the one in the lounge has patience and was chill about going to get it.

However when she got there she noticed that the tip of the sharks face had been bitten off.

CUE THE SHOCK, HORROR AND WATERFALL OF TEARS!

It was as if someone had cut off her arm.

However, when I asked the two that were in the room which of them had bitten it off they both vehemently denied it.  To the point where I really couldn’t tell which one of them it could be.  But it was obvious that one of them was lying to me.  So I tuned them about lying and gave them a chance to come clean.

Did they?

Nope.

That would have been great but instead I had to do some detective work.  First I gave the affronted party another shark.  Then I shoved the bitten off shark in my own mouth for stamina.  After that it was all about deciphering their reactions to the word bashing they had gotten from me.

But I left it.  I suspected the culprit but I wanted them to think they had gotten away with it.  That was until supper time when it was ON.  We’d all finished eating and it was just the two of us sitting at the table.  So I whispered in their ear, “I know it was you.”  The look on the face confirmed I was spot on.  Which then left going into the whole talk about how lying is a disgusting habit and it hurts people.  Rather come clean and face the consequences.

They were distraught and when I told them that they had to apologise to the hurt party they collapsed in tears because they didn’t want to make the person mad.  Eventually after about 30 minutes of chatting we got the apology said out loud.

It was a big shocker to me because yes, I know that they lie occasionally but this was direct to my face.  Repeatedly.  I’m not about to let that keep on going under my roof.  So I reinforced the fact that we are all tempted to lie, but it’s important that we don’t or if we do, that we own up to it.

Since then I have noticed a remarkable difference.  They keep owning to the lies they said by accident or without thinking.  Which is super!  Long may it last!