RSS feedI’m sitting here with Molly playing with her toys. Well she’s doing the playing, I’m just telling her fictitious stories about all the stuffed animals.
We have a bee on an elastic cord that bounces around like a, well, like a bee really, which is a nice educational touch, because bee in fact do buzz around in the air. So of course like a good parent, I grab the bee and go “bzzz bzzz bzzz”. But the reality for most parents is probably more like “bzzz bzzz bzzz, go away bee, or I’ll get the insect spray and kill you by squirting poison into your face”, which while technically still educational, is still not as preferable as the lie of the good old buzzing bee. “Look at the cute little bee, bzzz bzzz bzzz, look how it sits on your nose and doesn’t sting you, bzzz bzzz bzzz”.
Molly’s favourite though is an animal mobile, a little mirrored carousel with a cuddly pig, chicken and cow hanging from it by coloured threads. Molly loves to kick the animals around, and although she’s still a little uncoordinated at this point, she’s often able to grab one of the animals and put them in her mouth. Again, definitely educational, if not slightly inaccurate. While we do hang them up, we usually do this with the carcass once we’ve brutally killed them. I guess Molly’s just skipping the cooking bit.
So when is a good time to tell her than the bee isn’t really cute and can be a pest, and that the only things pigs, chickens and cows are good for are killing, cooking and eating? Or is it better to just say all this from the start, so that when told later on she doesn’t accuse you of lying? No wonder children are so good at lying, they learn it from their parents.