Honesty is obviously an important fundamental characteristic children must learn, but so is lightheartedness.
Our four year old is currently navigating the line between these two traits. This is where she is now: She runs up to me yelling, “Lyla’s eating chocolate!” For various reasons we don’t give our kids lots of sugary treats, so Lyla eating chocolate is out of the norm. “She’s actually eating a brownie,” Kennedy then exclaims through bursts of laughter. In my head I’m thinking, Lyla’s probably pretending to eat one of their play-foods; why does Kennedy think it’s so funny to get a reaction out of me? In fact I’ve noticed in the last few weeks a number of family members getting onto her because she was “lying” (their words). Where did she learn to fib like this? I wish she would just tell the truth.
Aha. Alas, an answer popped into my head. I had taught her to fib like this. My dad and both grandfathers were quite the jokesters growing up. Suppose I have become quite the jokester also. The difference between them and K, between K and me was 1) our delivery and 2) the lead time between telling the joke and delivering the punch line. The consequence of Kennedy not telling the punch line shortly thereafter a joke is told makes her come across as a dishonest person, when in fact she has just not yet learned the valuable lesson of timing. I’ve decided that I’m not upset with her for “lying” about Lyla eating chocolate and resolved to teach her about delivery and timing of jokes. With time I do believe she will grow up to be quite a clever girl. When I decided to head downstairs and check on Lyla (and talk to K about these things)…turns out Lyla was actually eating chocolate.