Never lie
As Jake was putting the kids to bed, G came up and asked Jake: "Do we lie?"
This is less a moral/ethical question than a backdoor to a toothbrushing topic, namely the fact that Garrett responds to "Did you brush your teeth?" with "I ACTually did!" Eventually I figured out that any time "ACTually" was mentioned in a sentence about what G did or did not do, it was a clear signal that he had not done the task and furthermore, had no desire to. To get around this annoying retort to the twice-daily toothbrushing inquiry, we explained to him that when he says he did something when he had in fact NOT done it, he was not telling the truth, which meant he was lying, and lying was wrong. This led to him connecting lying with "fibbing" (see "Larry Boy and the Fib from Outer Space"), but did not cut down on the "I ACTually did!" statements. He'd say, "I ACTually did!" and whatever our amused, annoyed, pretend-deaf or play-dumb response, he'd follow it up with "Saying I ACTually did is fibbing" or "We should not lie!" or some similar variation.
It was when our beloved Girl Next Door, Liz, (who no longer lives next door because we moved) stayed with G and the littler ones one night and put them to bed that we realized how dumb we were. In our defense, G loves Liz and would not try to be a pain in her butt as much as he enjoys doing it to us, but when he went to get ready for bed, she simply asked him, "Is there anything you forgot?" and he replied, "Yes, I forgot to brush my teeth." So now, when we think about it, we don't ask if he brushed his teeth, we ask if he forgot anything. Still, he misses the old pattern and tries to find ways of referring back to it--hence the inquiry about lying just when it's time to brush teeth.
So, G had just asked Jake, "Do we lie?"
Jake claims he had in his head something like, "It's not usually good to lie" but then thought that that was a stupidly equivocal thing to say. So instead responded with a very clear-cut, "No, we never lie."
That's *exactly* when Alex walked up to him and said, "Dad, what does the Tooth Fairy do if you lose TWO teeth?"
This is less a moral/ethical question than a backdoor to a toothbrushing topic, namely the fact that Garrett responds to "Did you brush your teeth?" with "I ACTually did!" Eventually I figured out that any time "ACTually" was mentioned in a sentence about what G did or did not do, it was a clear signal that he had not done the task and furthermore, had no desire to. To get around this annoying retort to the twice-daily toothbrushing inquiry, we explained to him that when he says he did something when he had in fact NOT done it, he was not telling the truth, which meant he was lying, and lying was wrong. This led to him connecting lying with "fibbing" (see "Larry Boy and the Fib from Outer Space"), but did not cut down on the "I ACTually did!" statements. He'd say, "I ACTually did!" and whatever our amused, annoyed, pretend-deaf or play-dumb response, he'd follow it up with "Saying I ACTually did is fibbing" or "We should not lie!" or some similar variation.
It was when our beloved Girl Next Door, Liz, (who no longer lives next door because we moved) stayed with G and the littler ones one night and put them to bed that we realized how dumb we were. In our defense, G loves Liz and would not try to be a pain in her butt as much as he enjoys doing it to us, but when he went to get ready for bed, she simply asked him, "Is there anything you forgot?" and he replied, "Yes, I forgot to brush my teeth." So now, when we think about it, we don't ask if he brushed his teeth, we ask if he forgot anything. Still, he misses the old pattern and tries to find ways of referring back to it--hence the inquiry about lying just when it's time to brush teeth.
So, G had just asked Jake, "Do we lie?"
Jake claims he had in his head something like, "It's not usually good to lie" but then thought that that was a stupidly equivocal thing to say. So instead responded with a very clear-cut, "No, we never lie."
That's *exactly* when Alex walked up to him and said, "Dad, what does the Tooth Fairy do if you lose TWO teeth?"
posted by Sue Freivald at
11:26 PM
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