Do you ever lie to your kids?
It’s coming up to Christmas / Hannukah and as a two-religion family, we celebrate both holidays, with different grandparents. We figure why not celebrate holidays as often as possible?
Anyway, holidays with presents mean that presents for our children start to show up on our doorstep weeks beforehand, sometimes in bright logo boxes, other times in dull brown cardboard, but huge.
Last night…
I was exhausted all yesterday, so last night I actually went to bed with the kids at 7.30pm (can’t remember the last time I did that!) and A- and G- were in their room, going to sleep, while the baby was in the big bedroom with me, lights off, slowing down to go to sleep.
A few minutes later, quiet as a wraith, G- comes into the room and whispers “Daddy, someone just knocked on the door.”
I answer ‘it’s okay, the door’s locked, go back to sleep.” (and he did! Amazing, such an easy bedtime last night)
This morning I wanted to have some closure and explain to them that it was just the UPS guy knocking on the door to let us know we’d received a package, but the package was a gift from Grandpa in a box that’s at least 2′ x 2′ x 3′ in size. I have no idea what it is, but it’s big!
So I lied to my kids. I told them that it was the UPS guy who knocked on the door last night after we went to bed, and that it was “just some boring book for Daddy”. They both talked about how weird it was to have someone knock on the door after dinner, but then the conversation wandered off the topic and was done.
Would you have lied to your kids in this situation? Or would you have said “it’s a present for you from Grandpa, but you can’t open it until Christmas, honey” even if you knew that they’d go bonkers wanting to see the box, shake it, pry a corner open to peek?