Lies I tell my two year old

Lies I tell my two year old…

The other day, Hayden and I were sitting in a booth at the diner.  She kept insisting that she wanted to stand up and say hello to the ninety year old couple sitting behind us.  Truth be told, I have no idea if they were cranky old people or if they were the nice old couple that love children.  I assumed they didn’t want my two and a half year old staring at them while they ate their apple sauce and pancake dinner.  I didn’t blink an eye and I simply told Hayden that she couldn’t go see them because they hate children and they steal kids and lock them up in their basement at home.  For good measure I added that they make the kids take three naps a day.

Hayden sat down.

It dawned on me that I regularly make up outrageous lies to get Hayden to behave.  I don’t quite know when I started doing this, but I think it dates back about a year ago.  Hayden was going through this phase where she constantly would run away from me whenever we were in a public place and I would freak out.  I remember telling my trainer about this and she said that when her daughter was younger and would run away in a store, she would point to an older man and tell her quietly that the man was planning on kidnapping her if she didn’t stay right by her side.  I mulled it over.  I didn’t want her to be afraid of all older men, but then I realized that unless it’s her father, uncle or grandfather, I don’t want her talking to strange old men anyway.  Seemed to make sense.  I was told by an in-law that this was ridiculous and would give her a complex, but I figured a little fear was a good thing.  (And not for nothing, but cough, cough, Sandusky, cough, cough).

We walked into Wal-mart which is full of crazy people anyway, and the moment she made a run for it, I grabbed her.  I pointed to an older man that was missing half his teeth and walking with a cane and calmly explained that he worked on a farm and he stole little girls that ran away from their Mom’s and made them sleep in a barn with the cows at night.  Clearly, it would have been enough to say that the old man was watching her, but my general nature was to elaborate. 

It worked.  She didn’t leave my side and constantly was looking over her shoulder.  Mission accomplished.

As time went on, my lies got a bit more exaggerated and spanned many topics. 

“Why do I have to have to take a nap?!”

“Because your brain can only handle so much information at a time and if you don’t take a nap and recharge your brain battery, you’ll forget who everyone is.  Do you want to forget who Mommy is and have to go live with a stranger that doesn’t know that you don’t like asparagus?”

“….no.”

Some things are ridiculous.  Our “Elf on a Shelf” who is named Friendly, actually has a magic carpet that that he flies on to the North Pole.  I told her that because I couldn’t think of a more logical answer and I saw her Aladdin movie out of the corner of my eye. 

Or better yet, if she doesn’t behave, Santa will bring all her presents to her cousin and she’ll have to sit on Christmas Day and watch him open all her gifts.

Here’s a small list of lies I have told Hayden:

-That Stop and Shop is owned by Santa’s elves and they are watching her at all times when she is in the store.  They will bite her toes if she doesn’t stay in the shopping cart.

-That Santa Claus is on a diet and has diabetes so we can’t leave him cookies, but we’ll leave him some carrots.

-That whenever she has an “accident” (we are fully potty trained!) an angel cries in heaven.

-If she doesn’t eat broccoli every day, she’ll never be able to poop again and explode.  (This is by far the smartest thing I’ve ever told her- because she panics if she doesn’t eat some “vegge-tables”)

-The “scary” cow at Stew Leonards is made out of marshmallows so he could never actually hurt her. 

-When our gold fish died, I told her that he ran away to join a Beatles tribute band.  I added that he was Paul McCartney just to make it more believable.

The list really goes on and on.  It could be something simple like “Mommy, why are you wearing a white shirt?”… and I’ll respond “Because today is wear a white shirt day to thank all the people who raise money for animal charity’s”.

For now it works.  When I sense she is getting a complex, I’ll ease up.  It’s important to note that when she asks me anything that’s serious, I answer truthfully and honestly.  She understands about how Mommy’s have babies.  (Well, as best as a two year old can understand).  She knows that there are poor people and people going hungry and that we have to help them.   She knows that Mommy has tattoos, or as she calls them my “stamps”.  When she saw me with a tampon in my hand and wanted to know what it was, I told her in simplified two-year old terms.  I actually wish I had hid that stuff a bit better because she opened all my tampons and lined them up down our hallway last month…  and peeled a pad and stuck it on her shirt and called it “my favorite new sticker”.

Never a dull moment… Never a dull moment.