Mum’s talk... by Sarah Reid
Small children are truthful little souls, even this week having been presented with my fi rst – or what I naively think might be my fi rst – barefaced lie from the lips of my fi rstborn, it wasn’t hard to sort the fact from the fi ction.
‘How did that happen?’ I had demanded in response to the mother of all messes on the fl oor.
The four-year-old pointed at her sister, eyes wide with feigned horror.
The poor younger sister was strapped in a high chair, a decent alibi in anyone’s book, but the older one’s fi nger remained resolutely pointed in her direction.
Although this fi rst (ha!) lie left me with a bit of an ache in my chest, there was something a bit charming about the crudity of the fi b.
It wasn’t me....
While the unthinking honesty of children is a large part of their innocence and loveliness, there’s no denying it brings its own problems. During a discussion once about who was and was not part of the queue for the ladies, elder daughter informed the waiting women that she was part of the line because she’d “had a wee accident”.
And another time, on a forest walk we passed a short and quite round man as we were crossing a bridge. “I think he’s a troll,” she declared when the poor man was barely feet away from us.
So, perhaps these primitive fi bs could be seen as a fi rst step on the way to the skills of diplomacy and tact. Instead of saying, “This tastes so yuck it makes my tongue sad” she might graduate to, “It’s lovely, really, but I had a big lunch”. The answer to “are you listening to me?” will become “Of course Mummy” instead of “No, that’s too boring”.
While it’s a scary thought that my sweet little daughter could ever grow into someone who would look me in the eye and fi b unfl inchingly, one thing’s for sure – until the age of brutal honesty is behind us I won’t ever be asking if my bum looks big in this. The truth can hurt, after all!
Your can follow Sarah on Twitter @sarahereid7
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