Every parent knows at some point they will have to teach their kids not to lie. At some point in their young lives, all kids will try to tell mom and dad a "story." In most of the cases, it will be to hide something they have done so they won't get into trouble or so they can get a reward they didn't earn.
Elizabeth is no different. Melissa and I've noticed over the past six months that Elizabeth has greatly increased the use of her imagination and she has been telling us some great tales. We've heard about trips to New York City and Canada. We've heard all kinds of tall tales that are obviously the development of a 4-year-old girl.
This evening we had a new experience. Instead of telling us a lie to hide something she did, Elizabeth chose to make up a story about getting in trouble at school.
On the way home from grandma's house, I asked Elizabeth if she was good at school today and she told me "no." She even acted like she was sorry for getting in trouble. In her class, if a student is bad, the teacher makes them move their name from the green light to the yellow light and if they continue being bad, they move to the red light. Earlier this week at parents' night, her teacher told us if a student was moved to the red light, the teacher would call us and have the student tells us what they had done to get into trouble. The same applied to students sent to the principal's office. Again, a phone call would be made to the parents.
After Elizabeth told me she wasn't good, I asked if she had been told to move her name to the yellow light. She said yes. She told me she had told another student to shut up. She continued the story by saying she was sent to the principal's office. This didn't quite fit with what the teacher had told me at parents' night, but maybe I had misunderstood. I asked for the principal's name and she said Mrs. Howard. The principal is actually Mr. Haggard so this didn't quite fit, but it was close. Elizabeth continued by telling me she did not get a sticker from the teacher at the end of the day like all the good kids did. She even asked if I thought she could get a sticker tomorrow if she was good.
When we got home, I had Elizabeth go tell her mother that she had been in trouble in school. Elizabeth repeated the story and we really began to question whether she was telling us the truth. We knew if she had been sent to the principal's office they would have called us and when we asked her about that, Elizabeth said they called grandma.
That left us little choice but to call grandma and ask. While we waited on grandma to call us back, we finally got Elizabeth to admit she had made up the whole story. Not only did she NOT get in trouble today, she got another sticker for being good.
We were preparing to punish Elizabeth for getting in trouble at school and we discovered she wasn't bad at school, but now we were dealing with her lying to us at home. If we let her go on lying to us - even if it is just a made up story - when would we know what was true and what wasn't.
At the end of the night, Elizabeth was sent to bed early tonight with no TV for lying to mom and dad. Ironically, that is probably the same punishment she would get for being bad at school.
Melissa and I talked about it after Elizabeth was finally asleep, and we both agreed we just don't understand why she risk getting in trouble with a made up story about getting in trouble. Again, I don't understand.
