MM Comment
Little white lies? No, shedding Tiny Tears
As parents, we’re all prone to telling our kids the odd little fib, aren’t we? MM’s editor recalls one earthshattering little white lie that had devastating consequences...
by Debbie Orme
It’s a bit of an irony, isn’t it? We raise our children not to tell lies and then spend half their childhoods feeding them total corkers. ‘Santa comes down the chimney’, for
example – (when we all know he comes in through the back door!). ‘If you turn your eyes in and the wind
blows, they’ll stay like that!’ ‘If you don’t go to sleep, the bogey man
will come.’ I remember vividly that horrific day when
I ‘outed’ Santa to my daughter. It wasn’t so much that she was shocked, it was more a case of being horrified at having been misled for ten years. For about a week after the ‘revelation’, she frequently approached me with a look of disgust and questions such as, 'So the Tooth Fairy?’ And, time and time again, I had to hang my head in shame and confess to having repeatedly lied throughout her formative years. ‘I know it was wrong,’ I pleaded, ‘but it
was always for your own good.’ But, you know what? My daughter got
over it and, some day in the future – well into the future I hope – she’ll probably do the same herself. I speak from experience, having suffered a similar earthshattering episode at the tender age of eight. At that time, my favourite doll was Tiny
Tears. How beautiful she was with her blonde, curly hair and big blue eyes - or at least until the day it became blue eye. It had all started off so well. I’d been concentrating so hard on giving Tiny her
64 Modernmum
bottle (ooh, look how the milk disappears!) that it took me a few minutes to realise that the milk wasn’t the only thing that had disappeared. Tiny’s eye had rolled back into her head....and stayed there. I was hysterical. Although she was still as cherubic and
sweet from the back, even I had to admit that this particular doll now looked more like something from The Exorcist and would’ve scared the bejaysus clean out of the average child.
I think I was about
twelve before I ever started to believe a
word that my parents ever told me again
‘Never fear’, I was consoled by my
parents. ‘There’s a Dolls’ Hospital in the city centre. We’ll take her over and get her eye fixed. She’ll be back for Christmas.’ The child psychologists would have had
a field day with this one. Every day I sat morose, staring at my child’s carrycot and high chair, awaiting her joyous return. On Christmas Day I rushed down the stairs expecting to find my beloved Tiny
Tears beautifully restored - and with full vision. But no, there, under the tree, sat a complete stranger. I picked her up and pulled out her dummy. ‘Maman,’ she wailed. ‘Maman?’ I stared in amazement. A crying doll…
and one that ‘spoke’ French? WOW! I clasped my new bébé to my bosom
(OK, to my two flies on an ironing board) and that was that. Moi et Bébé were now a twosome. The Blonde Medusa was forgotten and I was in dolly heaven. A few months later, however, while
searching for birthday presents in my mum’s wardrobe, I came upon a hessian bag in which I found poor Tiny Tears – face down and as naked as the day she was,
well....manufactured. I was bereft. Tiny Tears hadn’t been at the Dolls’
Hospital at all. Did such a place even exist, I wondered? All the time she’d been lying freezing in the wardrobe thinking that I, her mummy, had rejected and abandoned her. When I confronted my parents, they had the
audacity to tell me that they'd only done it 'for my own good’ and, in any case, they argued, wasn't Bébé a better option? I was torn. I think I was about twelve before I ever
started to believe a word that my parents ever told me again and, even though I was very young, I made a mental note that I would always preserve my integrity and never, ever tell my offspring a lie – white or any other colour. And we know how that panned out...
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