WOULD YOU LIE TO YOUR KIDS?
Scots families’ fibs are far more imaginative than the old line that carrots will help youngsters see in the dark and they can make life more fun
TELLING white lies is as much a part of parenting as cooking fish fingers and pairing socks.
Nearly half of us gloss over the truth at least once a week and nearly a fifth of us do it every day, according to a survey by Moonpig.
Some have been around so long that they hardly even count as porky pies.
Two out of five of us trot out the old “carrots will help you see in the dark” line, which does actually bear some relation to the truth.
“Yes, we are nearly there”, “if you don’t go to sleep soon, the tooth fairy won’t come” and “if you eat any fruit seeds, the fruit will start growing in your body” are other favourites that have stood the test of time.
These old chestnuts are entry level compared to the imaginative nonsense Scots parents are telling their offspring at the tea table.
Matthew Lynas’s mum used to tell him: “Finish your dinner if you want to be as tall as your Dad.”
He is now in his 20s and his father towers over him. “I’m still raging about that one to be honest.”
Comedian Susan Morrison’s family recycled lines from 20 years before. She said: “My mother told me that if I didn’t eat my crusts I was helping Hitler win the war. It was 1965.”
Stewart Lochhead’s kids turned their nose up at his home-made yoghurt. “I saved shop bought cartons and filled them with home-made. Scoffed.”
All of those pale beside the mother who convinced her son that Coca-Cola was no longer in production. All the red bottles and cans in the shops were just “memorabilia”.
Families create their own myths that begin with white lies. Writer Mike Small said: “I told mine I used to be a wrestler. This became less and less credible as years passed by until I had to admit that it wasn’t entirely based on real life.”
Douglas Timmins, who was a premature baby, recalled: “My father used to tell me as that I was so small when I was born that he had to bring me back from the hospital in a matchbox.”
Day trips and outings require some nimble thinking from weary parents.
Leaning against an old phone box in Edinburgh, Fiona Brownlee told a mid-tantrum three-year-old that it was a special box for naughty children.
Jane McGirk had a magic “anti-sick” button in her car that stopped the kids from feeling queasy on long journeys.
Jackie Kemp said: “We used to pretend there was a goblin sweetie mine under the ground on hillwalks and would ‘find’ a sweetie under a leaf or something that the goblins had dropped.” Clinical psychologist Linda Blair, author of books including The Happy Child, says there’s no one simple answer as to whether white lies are harmless or not.
She added: “Each parent has to parent the way they think best, but my advice is you need to look at the intent of a lie.
“If the intent is to share and make some events more fun and exciting, then I don’t see any harm in that. But if the intent is that you can’t be bothered to tell your child the right answer to a question they’ve asked, I don’t think that’s good.” Some kids are quick to realise what’s going on. Nina Henderson recalls telling a very naughty lie to her poor mother (me). She said: “We would walk up and down Byres Road and pass all the cafes and I would not say a word. Then we would pass Tinderbox, the most expensive one, and I would suddenly be starving to a living death.”
I told mine I used to be a wrestler. This became less credible as the years passed by My mother told me that if I didn’t eat my crusts, I was helping Hitler win the war. It was 1965