Honesty is the best policy, or so they say. Well, here’s a little piece of truth for ya: I lie to my kids all the time, and if your kid believes in Santa or the Tooth Fairy, you probably do, too.

I don’t lie to them out of malice. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I don’t want their adorable little heads to explode when I answer questions like, “Mommy, why is that cow giving his friend a piggy-back ride?” We live in the country, so we have witnessed our fair share of bovine fornication, and it always attracts a lot of attention and even more questions. I’m not going there with a four-year-old. Thanks, cows. Way to be discreet.

There’s a reason I don’t tell my kids the exact way babies get in, or out, of a momma’s belly. It’s the same reason I don’t explain the details of celebrity deaths or nuclear weapons agreements – because it’s not relevant in their world. Preschool is hard enough without knowing the tragic consequences of a Percocet addiction or the vagina-shattering way babies enter the world.

One day, they will be cognitively able to digest and process the answers to these more complicated questions, and I will enjoy the terrified, wide-eyed expressions those revelations bring, but now is not the time.

Kids are smart and inquisitive; you are playing with fire to even engage them in a conversation, but it’s part of the parenting package. We are there to teach them, and we all know, if you don’t give them something, they will find some little schmuck on the playground, and it’s never the well-informed kid.

When they ask, I try to give them satisfying answers to the big stuff, like babies and dead people. The tricky part is keeping the answers within their developmental capacity to understand. Basically, I employ the tactics of smoke and mirrors, and shades of grey. But, it’s definitely not the truth.

The thing about lies is, they can snowball in a hurry. One night before Easter, while brushing her teeth, my daughter started asking questions.

“Mommy, what does the Easter Bunny look like?”

Drawing from the image of the big-headed rabbit at the mall, I explained, “He looks like a bunny, but he’s tall, like Daddy.”

She processed that for a moment before following up with, “Does he wear clothes?”

I thought back to the mall Easter bunny. “Yeah, he wears a fancy vest and a bow-tie.” I was feeling pretty confident at this point.

She finished brushing and put her toothbrush away before saying, “So, he’s gonna come in our house at night, while we are sleeping…but he doesn’t wear pants? That’s weird.”

She hopped off the step-stool and exited the bathroom before I had a chance to respond. I had managed to turn the Easter Bunny into a huge creep. Awesome.

This is the problem with kids. One minute you are talking about tacos, and the next minute you are explaining why Billy’s Mommy went to Mexico without Billy’s Daddy. What the hell do these kids talk about at school? I don’t need that kind of stress in my life.

If you tell your kid the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, that’s great. I’m not mad at ya, but I can’t. And I don’t want to. Frankly, there just isn’t enough wine. If you could hear the way I answer these questions in my head, you would understand why I lie.

Sometimes lying is the best option.

“Mommy, why don’t you get this swimsuit?” Because having you destroyed 80% of my body, and I finished off the rest of it with tacos, cupcakes and booze .

“Why can’t we have a picnic outside?” Because the neighbor is an asshole who doesn’t know how to keep his dog in his own yard, and I don’t want you to be mauled over a french fry.

“Why does poop stink?” WTF, kid?

“Can we watch Paw Patrol?” No, I would rather set my eyebrows on fire than watch those pups save another baby sea otter.

If we said what we were really thinking, our kids would be in therapy until the end of time. Even with our parenting differences, we probably all share the common goal of keeping the little tikes out of the shrink’s office. So, yeah, I’m going to keep lying to my kids, for their own well-being. They will thank me one day.

This post was originally published on Close to Classy.

*********

About the Author

Jorrie of Close to Classy is a working mom of two whose parenting style can best be described as Roseanne meets Mary Poppins. She aspires to own furniture without stains and enjoy a shower without an audience. Her writing has appeared on Scary Mommy, Mamapedia, Sammiches and Psych Meds, and Mamalode. She is also a regular contributor for Urban Mommies. You can follow her antics on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.