Let’s get one thing straight right away: I am, generally speaking, an honest person. I pay for parking. I return extra change when the cashier messes up. I have never once pretended to be sick to get out of a baby shower, even though the opportunity has presented itself roughly nine hundred times.
But something happens the moment you become a parent. A switch flips. Suddenly you are capable of looking your own child dead in the eye and saying things that would make a courtroom judge raise an eyebrow, all in the name of making it to 7:30 PM with your sanity intact.
Why We Lie (And Why It’s Fine, Mostly)
Parenting experts will tell you honesty is the foundation of trust. Sure. Great. I believe that too, in theory, somewhere between the hours of nine and noon when everyone is fed and nobody is covered in something sticky. But by 4 PM, when the baseline level of chaos has reached a simmer and someone is asking me for the fourth snack in an hour, honesty takes a back seat to survival.
These aren’t the big lies. I’m not telling my kid the dog went to live on a farm. I’m talking about the small, tactical, completely necessary fibs that get a household through a Tuesday.
The Lies, Ranked By How Often I Use Them
- “The ice cream truck only plays music when it’s out of ice cream.” This one has bought me years of peace. Years.
- “If you swallow gum, it takes seven years to digest and also you won’t be hungry for dinner, so let’s just spit it out.” Half-true, fully effective.
- “Mommy’s phone battery is broken, that’s why I can’t let you watch videos right now.” Said while my phone sits at a healthy 74 percent, thank you very much.
- “That toy store is closed today.” Every single day. It is permanently, eternally closed. I don’t make the rules.
- “I don’t know how to make that snack.” I absolutely know how to make the snack. I simply do not want to make the snack.
- “We’re out of the good crackers.” The good crackers are hidden in the pantry behind the quinoa nobody will ever touch.
- “Mommy needs to use the bathroom alone because it’s the law.” Is it? No. Does anyone question it? Also no.
- “Vegetables make your hair grow faster.” I have no scientific backing for this. I have a four-year-old who now eats broccoli like it’s candy.
- “The remote control is broken, that’s why we’re not watching another episode.” The remote is fine. My patience for one more episode of talking trucks is not.
- “Bedtime is actually earlier tonight because the moon said so.” I don’t know why this works. I just know that it does.
The Ones That Always Backfire
Of course, not every lie lands smoothly. There was the time I told my son that spicy food “wakes up your tongue,” which he then repeated, loudly and proudly, to his very confused preschool teacher during snack time. There was also the unfortunate incident where I claimed broccoli trees “whisper secrets if you eat them slowly,” and now he insists on sitting in total silence while chewing, waiting for the broccoli to speak to him. I don’t correct this. I just let it happen.
And then there’s the lie that always, always comes back to bite me: “We’ll do that tomorrow.” My children have the memory of elephants when it comes to promises and the memory of goldfish when it comes to where they left their shoes. Tomorrow arrives, and suddenly I am being held accountable for a commitment I made under duress at 6 PM while trying to cook dinner one-handed.
A Small Defense of the Harmless Fib
I want to be clear that I’m not advocating for a household built on deception. My kids know I love them. They know the big truths: that I’ll always come get them, that I think they’re brilliant even when they’ve drawn on the wall again, that bedtime stories are non-negotiable even on the worst days. The little lies exist in a different category entirely. They’re less about deception and more about translation—taking “I am at my absolute limit” and turning it into something a small, snack-obsessed person can actually understand and accept without a twenty-minute negotiation.
Honestly, some of these fibs have become so woven into our daily rhythm that I’ve half-convinced myself they’re true. I genuinely flinch a little when I pass an ice cream truck now, half-expecting to find out it really is out of ice cream.
A Quick Reality Check For Myself
There is, admittedly, a version of me that worries about the day my kids figure all this out. I imagine a future therapy session where my son recounts, in detail, the Great Broccoli Tree Deception of his childhood. But then I remember that parenting is basically a long game of improvisation, and most of us are just trying to make it from breakfast to bedtime without a meltdown—ours or theirs.
So if you, too, have told your child that the library closes the second they ask to go, or that screen time causes “eye hiccups,” you are not alone. You are simply a parent doing the sacred, slightly dishonest work of keeping everyone fed, sane, and in bed by a reasonable hour. The truth can wait until they’re twenty-five and we’re laughing about it over coffee.