A Little White Lie
A fathers duty in my opinion is to teach your children to be the kind of person you wish you were. Clearly as dads we will often fail in this effort mostly due the fact we are all flawed in one way or the other. A small effort that we can actually be successful in is to be truthful in all things that concern our kids. I do not want to be the guy who lets his children think that lies, even small white lies are acceptable.
That said I am not naive enough to believe my effort will result in a child who can tell no lie. A child like that would be unable to know he was being lied to because he had no experience with duplicity from those around him. The world would tear a child like that apart. Total absence of the capacity to tell or recognize a lie is sadly something that cannot be fostered in society.
Shortly after my first son got to the age where he could communicate his wants effectively, I found myself in a bit of a dilemma. My boy had received a gift from a well meaning relative that when prompted bleated out some of the most soul crushing, mind numbing songs that I had ever been made to suffer through. The boy of course loved the damn thing. He would sit there in front of me, his huge blue eyes glowing in delight repeatedly saying “again, again!
Being a loving Dad I complied and squeezed the toy’s belly again and again. I had assumed that he would tire of the thing, at that age his mind went from one diversion to the other without much effort or retention. Apparently however my boy was some form of evil genius. Every morning as I sat bleary eyed at the kitchen table, attempting to calculate the minimal amount of cleaning I could get away with and not look like a lazy jerk. He would toddle over holding his beloved toy in hand and requesting my assistance with his favorite diversion.
Eventually I was faced with a choice, I could continue to serve my evil master or I could lie. Just a small lie nothing too underhanded, I could say it was broken or better yet the thing could just up and disappear. He wouldn’t know any better after all. The things I told him, the walls of our home, his toys and crib, all of it was his entire world and to him all of it was true. I realized suddenly that he did not know lies. He did not know that some of the things around him were not exactly what they seemed. That it was possible for another person to say or do something that was not real, that was not true. That he could be told a lie.
Needless to say I was not going to be the one to tell this little fellow his first lie. He learns everything else from me; this was one thing I would let the world handle.
