My Baby's Pants are on Fire

I’m not a morning person. I’m a coffee person. But somehow, half of my DNA has created a little being who is an all day person. She’s a morning, afternoon, evening, and night person. How she is able to literally bounce through her entire day, I’ll never understand. One morning a few months ago I was (very groggily) loading the washing machine with a load of my son’s clothes. We were at that desperate point where if he spilled anything on his current shirt he would be borrowing something of his sister’s (and probably walking around in a pink unicorn dress for the rest of the day.) So, I was tired and distracted by my current task. As my head was shoved part-way in the washing machine, I heard my daughter come jumping around the corner and ask in an excruciatingly loud voice if she could have a cookie from the container on the counter. 

“No, you may not have a cookie right now. We don’t eat cookies for breakfast.” I robotically answered back. We don’t eat cookies for breakfast. Based on my mothering for the last four-and-a-half years, what would possess you to think that I would let you have a cookie for breakfast?? Kids. Ever-so hopeful. After I calmly recited my answer to her, I assumed she had skipped off into the living room to twirl, jump, and dive off the couch like usual. 

I finally finished loading up the washer and as I turned back around towards the kitchen, I instinctively glanced at the counter where I had left the cookie container. For a few seconds I just stared at the EMPTY spot on the counter and tried not to start fuming from my ears. The container was now most definitely not on the counter where it should have been. OH Mommy was awake now. Apparently cookie thievery works better than coffee to wake a person up. However, I didn’t want a crazed mommy monster to attack her with parental rage, so I first paused for a second and tried to steady my breathing. Then I took off marching through the kitchen until I rounded the corner of the living room. There before my eyes was my two-year-old standing over an open container of cookies and gathering them up in his hands. My eyes darted over to the stairs and I saw my daughter sprinting up to her room with a small mountain of cookies cradled in her shirt. 

I miraculously stayed calm as I asked her what she was doing. Her response turned into a ten minute interrogation of her full out LYING to me about having a secret cookie snack. (She even tried to blame it on her brother which could be a whole other post) As I stared in disbelief at her insistence on sticking to her lie, of course, disappointment flashed through my mind. But I also felt a tinge of guilt. Had she somehow learned this behavior from me? What had I done in my parenting techniques to make her think this was ok?

My mind immediately went to the thought that she must have learned this behavior from me because the concept of modeling was fresh in my mind. I had just recently learned a life-changing lesson when I had the flu. First of all, I learned that the flu sucks (totally). But, as Grace was so tenderly taking care of me, I sent one of my friends a picture of it all. It was so endearing. She laid out a blanket and a pillow on the couch and even brought her favorite stuffed animals downstairs to keep me company. She topped off the cuteness by making sure I had a glass of water next to me. My friend texted back and said “She is modeling how well YOU take care of her!” ..YES! My heart soared even though my body just wanted to sink into the couch and never move again. 

Yes, some of her traits are things that she has learned from my modeling and some of them have been learned from other people. But why is it that whenever she displays a characteristic that is…undesirable, I immediately take the blame and assume I have somehow failed her? In the same way that I can’t take the credit for everything awesome about her, I also shouldn’t take the blame when she is working through something hard. I hear the “mommy guilt” thing joked about all the time, and I know that it is something that a lot of moms (and dads) do. Myself included. I also know that mommy guilt is not productive or life-giving. So, with that knowledge, why do I see her lying about eating cookies and immediately feel like it’s my fault? I’ve never modeled how to eat cookies for breakfast and lie about it, but ok, I guess she’s gonna try it anyways! She is her own unique person. And I’m doing the best I can. It’s my job to help her work through these tough situations and not waste time blaming myself for it. Here’s to hoping I can walk alongside her in this journey towards truth-telling, and here’s to having hope that she will no longer be a liar liar with her pants on fire. 

Also…Note to self: Store the cookies in the pantry. Out of sight, out of reaching distance for her to steal them, lie about it, and blame her little brother. 

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Has your kid gone through a lying phase? How did you handle it? Did your kid get caught with her hand in the cookie jar too? :) 

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Blessings,

Shantastic