By Leslie Senevey
Here’s a truth we rarely talk about: Parents lie.
Parenting advice books omit lying, but you’ll need to master it as a mom or dad.
The lies start small.
Yes, Big Bird is real.
No, drum sets and accordions are not allowed in this neighborhood. In fact, they’re illegal. We could get arrested.
They get more complicated.
Yes, that is the same Gilbert the goldfish as when you went to school this morning, even though he was floating upside down then and is now swimming laps like he’s in the Olympics.
Always tell the truth. But not like when you told Uncle Carl his breath smelled like Fritos and dirt. I’ll never let anything hurt you.
Parents are often in cahoots when it comes to the fibs we tell our kids. I’m not sure who came up with the Tooth Fairy, but we all welcome her in. I don’t know if it’s a Texas thing or maybe just the wacky neighbors where I grew up, but I was subjected to the fallacy of snipe hunting when I was a child. Paper bag in hand, heart hammering, eyes wildly scanning the dark for mysterious prey, I ran in frenzied circles while the others — mostly grownups, mind you — kept furiously scrunching their own paper bags and yelling “Got one!”
I never got one. And I never understood the point of an entire family (not mine) playing a pretty pointless prank on one eager-to-please kid. (Am I still a little bitter over this rude introduction to futility? Yes, yes I am.)
Then there are the tall tales we tell regarding the birds and bees. I don’t remember my parents saying babies were delivered to your door like pizza by a big white bird. Still, I do know whatever story they shared didn’t align with what Chuck Meyers told me in the back of my mom’s station wagon while using cardboard gingerbread men to demonstrate. Let’s just say Chuck’s version was the truthier truth, and it prompted my parents to hand me the book How Babies Are Made and tiptoe out of the room before I could ask any questions.
The holidays, seemingly the most wholesome of times, are a veritable wonderland of white lies, falsehoods and falalalala.
Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings — sneaky little elves on shelves.
Happy bigger elves who make toys at the North Pole. Flying reindeer. A fat man in a suit who slides down the chimney bearing gifts. Who sees you when you’re sleeping. (And has other creepy Santa superpowers.) We deck the halls with boughs of folly.
Sometimes the seasonal lies spiral out of control, no fault of our own. One year we had a basketball goal hidden in the garage, waiting for the big day. Our garage door chose Christmas Eve to malfunction. We couldn’t open it, which meant we couldn’t get the big gift out. Already bleary-eyed and delirious from assembling toys in the wee hours (if only we’d had some elves to help), we scrambled to create a Santa scavenger hunt to reveal the imprisoned sports equipment, which the kids could only peek at through the garage-door window that Christmas morning.
Yes, we could have just spilled the beans that we bought the basketball goal and hid it in the garage, but where’s the magic in that?
As parents, we know life won’t always feel like a fairy tale, so we try to create some that our kids can carry with them on the journey. We want them to believe in possibilities and enchantment.
We know that despite our best efforts, the older our children get, the more the world will reveal its often uncomfortable realities. So we work hard to fill their childhoods with wonder and whimsy.
No matter the season, we aim to buffer their spirits for whatever adventures lie ahead. And that’s the honest-to-goodness truth.
Leslie Senevey is a lifelong Fort Worth writer, former dance teacher, sometime decorator and full-time dog and cat mom. Her human kids live in LA and New York. She believes honesty is the best policy except when it comes to the cuteness of newborn babies. You can find her publication, Distracted by Pretty Things, on Substack.