Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies

Little white lies. I find myself telling them to my three-year-old all the time recently. This is mainly to avoid a barrage of questions and the resulting thirty minute conversation about one thing in particular.

Here's an example. (Although they hit my lips so frequently now, finding one example in this churning sea of lies that I've been rafting on could be difficult. But since this one just happened, it's fresh in my mind.)

Camille stuck a bunch of stickers on our wooden credenza the other night. I let her. Because she was intensly into it and because she was quiet for about 45 minutes. Shortly thereafter, I put both she and her sister into a bath, ran into the other room, quickly removed all of the stickers before they left behind the impossible-to-remove-residue, and then tossed them into the trash. This was like two nights ago. Nothing was brought up about the stickers last night.

So this morning, Camille sits down to eat breakfast, and all of a sudden, "Mommy, why did you put your stuff on top of my stickers? I can't see them."

And the sea swells. "Oh, you know what happened honey? When I put my stuff down, I accidently ripped all of those pretty stickers, and there wasn't anything that I could do to save them so I had to throw them away."

Now, here's a golden opportunity for a life lesson, right? I could have talked about how it's not really good to stick stickers on anything wooden, or any kind of furniture for that matter, as sometimes the stickers don't come off, they leave sticky residue behind, they can discolor furniture, etc.

But no, I've discovered that the little white lie has the power to bring everything to a close right there.

I used to think that it was important to tell the truth to Camille and talk about why things were the way they were. As a matter of fact, one of those last conversations that I had with her was earlier this year regarding her pacifier.

She was trying to quit the binkie and was struggling. I explained to her that she was going through withdrawal. She asked what I was talking about. So I attempted to explain what the heck withdrawal meant and found myself explaining what smoking was to then explain what it meant to quit smoking, how it feels, and how this is all described as withdrawal. All the while explaining that smoking really isn't good for anyone, I'd prefer that she never do it, but that, at some point in the future, she would have to make that decision for herself.

????

So the little white lie. It's great. It's easy. It saves me some brain power.

And I figure I've got at least six more months to use it before she's onto me.