Guest Post: Pants on Fire

This post was written by Ashlee Andrews, an amazing writer who blogs about family life and adoption over at The Kitchen is Not My Office.  Ashlee  works part-time as a veterinarian and is a full-time mother to four children, two biological and two who joined the family through international adoption.  She spends the rest of her time educating others about adoption of older and HIV positive children, running, cooking and chasing after her four little (occasional) liars.  If you have a moment, check out her post about why she adopted and her post about picking up her daughter at the orphanage.  Ashlee’s story is inspirational and should not be missed.  These posts will give you goosebumps, I promise.  Her blog can be found at: http://www.thekitchenisnotmyoffice.com/  Thanks Ashlee!

I’ll admit it. Lately I’ve been a little bothered by an issue that has arisen in our household. Lying. No one likes a liar, especially if that liar is one of your children. As a mother, a tiny little piece of your heart breaks when your little preschooler tells their first lie. And as our children get older, we feel angry, disappointed, discouraged and worried when our children lie.

After the most recent lying episode, we discussed the incident, decided how we would handle it and discussed how it would be handled if it happened again in the future (one free pass around here…one time will lead to a discussion so child knows we mean business and that we won’t tolerate this behavior, second time leads to more serious consequences). I was firm yet loving and calm. And then I left for work and wigged out a little bit.

After a few deep breaths, I felt much better and resolved that I’d continue to handle this firmly yet calmly. And as much as I really hope that our kids don’t grow up to be liars, there are times when (after disciplining appropriately), I try to see the “sunny side of the lie”. After all, almost every child tells a lie at some point in time. As mothers who have worked so hard to raise nice, polite, honest kids, sometimes it does our hearts good to try and find a little humor in all of it.

I’ll give you a few examples. All children shall remain anonymous as to not implicate any one of our four children specifically.

For two of our children, English is their second language. One of them not only fibs but she can make up the fib in a new language. Of course part of me is disappointed but part of me is slightly impressed. That does take skill.

One of our children does not really tell lies but instead readily confesses the crime and then tries to justify why she thinks it is okay. If we ask her where she got something, she’ll reply “I stole it but I’m certain they didn’t want it anymore.” This is the child who will probably call to tell us all about the fun that she’s having in college after she moves out. We worry about what she IS going to say, not what she isn’t going to admit.

Another of our children is “The Politician”. This child embellishes a story to make an ordinary day sound extraordinary. It’s amazing the places he goes and the people he sees on days when I never even knew he left the house…

A friend once told me that lying is a sign of intelligence since obviously it takes good mental capacity to be able to fabricate a tale. I really hope this is true. If lying is a predictive factor for ending up in the slammer then I better start worrying. If there is a correlation between lying and future success then our children just might set the world on fire.

We mothers like to wish a fair bit of karma onto our own children. As in, “Some day when you’re a mommy I hope that you have a little liar that you have to deal with too.” I can’t help but wonder what kind of lying I did as a child to end up with a whole pack of {usually sweet, well-behaved, talented and kind} fibbers and truth-stretchers. Hmmm. Food for thought for sure.

Maybe I should go apologize to my mom.

Want to hear more from Ashlee?  You can find more on her Facebook page or follow her on Twitter!