The evidence was everywhere: an empty wrapper; brown stains around the mouth; dark smears down the front of the dress; cocoa breath; the knick-knack box that stored chocolates sent from Babcia in Poland on the floor open.
“L, did you eat chocolate?” I ask.
She put her head down in shame — a new trick — and the looked up and said calmly, “No.”
I look at her quizzically and ask again. I get the same answers.
And suddenly, everything I’d learned about parenting during the last thirty-one months goes out the window. “How do you deal with someone lying who isn’t old enough to know what truth is?”
Some quick research shows that my assumption was right:
Your toddler lies because at this age he’s not yet able to differentiate between reality and fantasy. Until he’s 3 or 4, your toddler won’t fully grasp the concept of lying, because he doesn’t yet understand the idea of an objective truth based in fact. (S.Denham)
And yet, it didn’t seem like the the best idea simply to ignore it. Denham goes on to provide suggestions in her article, but standing there, looking at a chocolate smeared little girl who’d just told me ever so sweetly, “No, I didn’t eat chocolate,” I experienced something I hadn’t experienced at home for quite some time. At school, this happens quite frequently, but at home — not so much. In short, I stood there dumbfounded, wondering what in the world is the “right” way to handle the situation.
I told her that she’d lied, and I explained what that mean in concrete terms: “You told me you didn’t eat the chocolate, but you did eat it.”
And from there? Everything that came to mind just seemed so pedantic and ineffectual.
“Teach about the truth” is now on the parenting to-do-when-she’s-old-enough list.
Image: morguefile.com
You gave her a definition and soon you’ll give her the reason for doing the right thing (telling the truth) and judging the type of relationship you have with her (so full of total trust and unconditional love) that will be that.
Except…
…there’s a flip side and I found this flip side to be far far more difficult: she will expect the same truth telling from you. And that’s hugely challenging! Introducing the idea of avoiding truth. Not telling her the full story. Not giving her every detail when she asks for it. All of that I found to be nearly impossible to manage until they got to be adults and were willing to recognize that truth is good, when used with common sense.
Anyway, yours is a sweet (!) story. She obviously has some sense of truth already, because she chose a different path. But then, I have no doubt that she is supremely precocious! The price for a smart little girl is that everything will come a little bit ahead of schedule! :)