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35 Lies Parents Tell Their Kids That Other People Are Calling Great Parenting ‘Hacks’
Parenting is all about unconditional love, empathy, and family values. But it also involves a few bottles of wine, bribery, and lying. Fortunately, moms and dads aren't sugar-coating any of it.
To show you that being a hypocrite isn't necessarily a bad thing, Bored Panda put together a list of tweets where parents share the times they... stretched the truth with their kids. From the classic "I can see it from here" to the new-age "Hummus is princess food", we included them all. Enjoy!
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However, people should be really careful when it comes to lying to kids. Imagine this: An adult meets a child and says: "There is a huge bowl of candy in the next room. Want to go get some?" The child agrees and follows the adult into the room.
But there is no candy.
The adult admits it was a lie, explaining, "I just said that because I wanted you to come play with me."
This was the first step in an experiment by Chelsea Hays and Leslie Carver. The researchers subjected 46 children to this trick, and as you can probably guess, these kids felt disappointed. But the children were polite and agreed to play with the adult anyway.
This leads to the second part of the experiment—a guessing game.
My dad is the only one of our family who eats Brussels sprouts: had a friend over for tea in high school, he asked her if she liked Brussels sprouts, she exclaimed "oh no, they're gross! But I do like those little cabbage things" (meaning the sprouts). Proud of my fam , none of them blinked an eye. I guess she just said "ew Brussels sprouts" coz we all did/other ppl do, without realising
For this phase, each child was asked to stare straight ahead while the adult held a toy behind the child's back.
The toy represented a familiar fictional character (like Winnie the Pooh, or the Cookie Monster), and the child had to guess the identity of the toy without looking.
As a kid, I was told, simply enough, tht you should wear your seatbelt in the car because without it a car crash can kill you. I don't see why this situation would require a lie when the truth is perfectly fine here.
Because in reality most kids don't understand death. The truth only works if it can be correctly understood.
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My dad was a designer for Ford. He didn’t wear his seatbelt on a hunting trip and fell out of a Jeep. His drawing arm was shattered. They put in a rod to stabilize the arm. Took him months of grueling work to get back enough functionality to go back to work. No one in the family ever went anywhere without a seatbelt again.
I don't see anything wrong with telling kids this little white lie. It would speed things up and kids would get into the habit of buckling up before the car starts. And if they think about it later as they grow and realize it wasn't the truth they're going to know their mom did it to keep them safe.
I have had to tell grown adults that we aren't going anywhere until they put their seatbelt on. And then later I had to threaten to pull over and kick them out if they didn't put it back on when they took it off.
I find it so annoying when i am getting into a car with a friend and their parent starts driving before i am even buckled in. Drives me nuts! (Pun not intended.)
I just teached my kids that seatbelt must be wore. I do not move until everyone has it fastened (same for adults that comes in my car)
A competent mechanic can add seat-occupancy sensors to the drivers' seatbelt 'dinger' circuit on pretty much any car, so your rear passengers will get the same audible reminder that you do.
My last few cars have all had these sensors - no-wants to listen to the annoying ding.
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My mother told her neighbour that. The lady never wanted to put her seatbelt on. One day when she was riding with her son they were in a small accident. He was shocked that she had her seatbelt on and hadn't gotten hurt. He said Mom you never wear your seatbelt. She said must be getting to be a habit. Did you know Betty's car won't even start unless everybody has their seatbelt on?
Using seat belts gained popularity due to children making their parents start wearing them 🤣🤣
For me, it was the police that would arrest you for not wearing a seatbelt. Even today when I see a cop car, I make sure that the seatbelts properly attached
As kids, my brothers and myself had to “hold on to the car” so that “it” wouldn’t run away whenever we arrived anywhere . I used it on my kids too when they were little , it works if the parents don’t burst out laughing, watching the weight of responsibility !
I told my kids the same when they were little. They are in their 40s now
welp, my dad told me if the ice cream truck was playing music, it meant he had sold all the ice cream....
I told my kids "the car doesn't go until the seatbelts are fastened." They knew I was the one who made the car go. Now, I take care of old people and tell them the same thing!
After playing two rounds of the game, the adult suddenly told the child that she had to leave for a minute to answer a phone call.
She said she'd be right back and the two of them would continue the game. Meanwhile, she explained, she was going to leave behind the next toy to be identified (she covered it so the child couldn't see what it was) and put it on a table.
"Don't peek while I'm gone!" she said.
Probably the next lie will be that daddy sleeps now in a sofa because there he can hear...
The adult was gone for 90 seconds. During this period, a hidden camera recorded the child's activities. When the adult came back, she asked the child to promise to tell the truth, asking "When I was gone did you turn around and peek to look at the toy?"
Hays and Carver recorded the answers, and compared the results to those of children in a control group (47 kids who went through the same procedure, but without the initial trickery).
The results were really interesting. Compared with older children, 3- and 4-year-olds tended to peek more often. But they also tended to tell the truth more often. Their responses didn't vary by the condition—being lied to did not make a difference.
But the behavior of older kids (ages 5 and up) depended on the adult's track record. The kids who had been tricked by the adult were more likely to peek. They were also more likely to lie about it afterward.
Now at least you know the potential consequences of lying to a child. Assuming they catch you...
Yes this lol, I'm currently in a long term battle of wills and I use this :D
Be careful, I'm a middle aged woman that can't leave the house, start work, go on a journey, join a meeting, without going to the bathroom first!
Once my 3yo nephew had a sleepover at my house. When he woke up the next he asked me "why are you so beautiful?" I almost cried :D
Our computer and tv used to need naps, or they would be so tired they would need to sleep all of tomorrow. As evidenced by the computer having a sleep mode! XD it was good while it lasted, he's long since wised up but it worked for quite a while
this one's cute :) thats it, i definitely want to be a parent when im older
You'd be surprised how many toys we tried "new" batteries in, but sadly they didn't work! (Only on several really awful toddler toys, nothing he was attached to)
It should be. The fact that they're corporate sociopaths that keep it open is no reason to pay them.
"Go hide, I'll come find you." I can just imagine the child 3 hours later, just standing in plain sight like: "Mommy, can you find me?" and she just completely ignores them haha
I am at work right now and this song is playing on the radio, how ironic
Oh my goodness, my brother used to be up at 6 or 7 any day we didn't have school, but on school days my mom had to go in his room multiple times and work SO hard to force him to get up! I probably did that too when I was younger (and had less appreciation for sleeping in) but he's younger, so I remember him doing it more recently.
Note: this post originally had 48 images. It’s been shortened to the top 35 images based on user votes.
Is it just me, or are half of these just people being shitty parents, as well as shitty people?
Interesting that you also found it. I also perceive two different types of entries here: those that are funny because the parents do not take themselves too serious and realize parenting is a lot about improvising – I think most parents can relate, and it can be hillarious. And those who seem to excuse lies for situations when they were to lazy to actually care or refused to understand how children perceive the world.
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A lot of these are just lazy. I mean ... your kids do trust you, don't they? You expect them to obey your rules, to tell you when they encounter problems outside, ... lying to them shouldn't be a daily habit, but kept for very rare moments where they really can't handle the truth. It simply isn't ok. Also, don't we have a huge global outbreak of facts-deniery at the moment? Where does it come from that reality is a mere opinion in a lot of people's view? How honest were the parents of that incel with the horn helmet? Did he mess up his mind totally on his own, or may it be that he had a mother who resorted to lies whenever stuff was unfomfortable? Also - if you're uncomfortable telling your children what you do, it likely is wrong anyway, so instead of lying yourself out of the trouble, you can do yourself out of trouble. By not doing what is embarrassing to admit to your kids.
When my parents wanted to take a nap, they said "When i wake up we're gonna clean. Wake me up in an hour." Lo and behold, the house was dead silent and they slept long and deep.
I've tried a variant recently. "If you aren't going to sleep, you are going to clean." And just like that, my toddler picks up her toys instead of laying the F down.
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Some of the "Lies" are not to be taken seriously. Some are lazy, irresponsible parenting and some are cruel. This represents deep character flaws.
One time my dad needed me to do something for him at his house while he was out of town, but my 2 1/2 year old son and I were in watching his favorite cartoon and I could tell by the mood he'd been in all day that if I said we had to go he was going to start crying and it would be a whole scene and I wasn't trying to deal with that at the moment. So I sneakily unplugged the router and told him, "Oh no! We ran out of internet! Let's go get some from Papa's house really quick!" When we got to my dad's I gave my son a big Ziploc bag and told him to open it and run around the house to catch all the wifi while I did what my dad had asked me to do. When I was done we zipped the bag up and headed back home, then I had him dump the 'wifi' onto our router and wouldn't you know it, it started working again!
I love how some people are using Santa Claus as a response to those calling out the horribly lazy parents who refuse to raise their children with discipline and integrity. There is a huge difference between using lies to avoid proper parenting and continuing a lovely innocent tradition that everyone appreciates so much that they carry it on with their own children. For those deliberately obtuse who point out Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, etc: Go suck a rock.
I love the Santa tradition and we practice it in my house, even though my boys are just about too old to believe it anymore :( But just pointing out the Santa myth was originally and continues to be used to manipulate children into 'being good', scaring them with not getting toys, getting coal, or in other cultures even being beaten by 6-8 black men or being taken by a demon if they don't behave themselves. Even the soft, jolly American version can be pretty threatening if you think about it as a child might, 'he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good so be good for goodness sake!'...there's even a tattle tale elf now who will make sure Santa knows all your misdeeds in case he didn't somehow see it with his all seeing eyes. You could easily argue that's also pretty lazy parenting to get a behavior you want, not just an innocent tradition.
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Funny we teach not to lie but we do ourselves. Our toothfairy will tell them to clean up, too. For St Patrick's, we mess up the house a little and our oldest makes traps. The lephrechan gets caught in a trap. I make a really crappy 30 second drawing cutout and put it in the trap and leave a note saying their trap was so good they caught the lephrechan and he turned into paper. They need to clean up and the lephrechan will return back to being alive next year. She is oblivious to things like my hand writing and how the lephrechan wrote a note after turning into paper.
Parents lie because sometimes explaining does not work with the kids. Kids may deny any reasonable arguments. And I know many adults who wouldn't buckle up although they know it saves life.
There's a huge difference between silly lies (santa claus, tooth fairy and such), and not being able to set ground rules and teach your kid to follow them.
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Weird that I chose not to have kids at all because this was the kind of parent I knew I would be... only to find out they are apparently "hacks". "That's right Timmy, wind is caused by the trees waving back and forth".
Long before Walmart and Target, we had to go to a toy store (FAO SCHWARTZ, Toys R Us) for toys and gifts. I convinced my kids that those places were museums and we couldn't touch, just look!
When I was a kid in the 90's we had a minivan with a clock display on the ceiling for the passengers in the back, and it also showed the temperature. Every time we crossed the border into Canada my dad would get our attention so we could watch the temperature automatically change from Fahrenheit to Celsius, and that's how we would know the exact second we crossed. One day in my thirties I was reminiscing about this with my dad when it suddenly dawned on me that he was a dirty rotten liar.
The only lie I ever told my kids was about lying.....They thought their tongues turned green if they lied. I would get them to stick their tongue out when I knew one was lying, the child that refused to stick it out was lying. I don't feel bad in the slightest, they are honest teens now and even I get surprised at the things they own up too so I guess it worked. Oops actually 2 lies, my son believed for ages that I was batman. The secret being that batman is really a woman which is why we had to keep it a secret. He believed it for about a year when he was 5-6 lol.
One time my younger sister really wanted to go to the beach, and we'd been out all day so we were tired and hungry, it was about 5:55, and my mother told her that "We can't, the beach shuts at 6" But hey not too bad.
Times have truly changed. I think for the better. My parents rarely needed to lie. It's either do as you're told or some form of pain is in your immediate future.
Laughing hysterically at the non-parents who judge parents for lying to their kids. Presumably, the same non-parents who judge us for feeding our kids junk food. If you ever have kids, you're in for quite a shock lol.
I'd not judge parents for lying or feeding junk food, do what gets you through the day, but I do think that some people forget that we have all been children. A friend of mind constantly forgets to consider things from the child's perspective and only sees it from the parents. Fair enough, she is one, and there is nothing wrong with that per se but it can be helpful to look back and remember what we liked/didn't like that our parents did. I don't mean ordinary discipline - disliking that is just tough and not a reason to not do it with our children! Just my own opinion of course.
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My very young niece and nephews stayed with me frequently. How did I know they were jumping on the bed? Not that I could hear them, but because I could see them. Through the wall? Yes. How did I know his pjs were under that blanket? Oh, right, because you can see through things. When they asked how I knew, I told them that grown-ups sometimes have super powers and when they grew up , I would tell them all about it so they could have their own super-powers. Took them awhile to figure out I was scamming them. Seat belts unbuckled kept the car from going was actually a car super power of a special option.
Our family tradition is the "liar's spot". My mom told me If I lied a green spot would appear on my forehead. But I could not see it because it was invisible to children and only adults could see it.... I realised how easy it was to spot a lie when years later my niece always came with a hand on her forehead to cover the "spot" so we would not Catch her lying. (It looked adorable but I never did it with my kid. I remember feeling stupid when I understood as a kindergarten age my mom was lying about it....did not want my daughter to feel this way).
The kids aren't getting hurt or damaged so what is the fuss? My son would only eat brocolli if I told him it was baby trees. He eats brocolli and in the mean time he is 30 years old. And he finds the baby trees funny.
My parents: You'll understand when you have children. Me: Doesn't raising a child require giving a flying f**k?
Why are people so afraid of the truth. My son and I laughed about how we disgusted death and deorderent on the same day when he was ten. He battled a catastropic illness and depended on the truth so he could prepare for painfull times, not knowing caused fear.
My favorite came froma Dad to his fractious kids on the subway (metro): "Don't make me turn this train around!"
I'm not a troll but I think it is better to build trust with them instead of lying because if you would lie they will eventually stop believing and obeying you.
When my son was in middle school we were at a restaurant and I ordered a Guinness with my dinner. He begged and begged to try it. After it warmed up a bit I let him have a sip. Oh the face he made! He said oh that's awful! Does all beer taste like that? Yes is does son, yes it does... It was years later before he tried to drink beer again. Saved his high school years at least. Until he was legal to buy his own.
I tell my son that the show he wants to watch that I can't tolerate is broken and we have to check back later.
My wife and I tried not to lie to our kids. Here's why: My mom lied to me all the time, sometimes for no reason at all. I was probably about 7 the first time I caught her lying, and it ruined her credibility with me forever. She's now 84, and if she told me the sun will come up tomorrow, I'd get a second opinion. Her eyes are brown because she's full of s**t. She's not a bad person, she just has a very casual relationship with the truth.
Did you all just skim over the one that said "Don't be judgemental"? Sheesh! You do you and mind your business! Just because they posted about it does not give you the right to judge these people like you all are saints!
The whole point of this being posted is for people to say whatever they want about it.
Load More Replies... I also told my kids that we don't put Xmas lights on the house because the lights indicate where Santa needs to visit. We are lucky enough to be able to visit Santa at the mall!!
Is it just me, or are half of these just people being shitty parents, as well as shitty people?
Interesting that you also found it. I also perceive two different types of entries here: those that are funny because the parents do not take themselves too serious and realize parenting is a lot about improvising – I think most parents can relate, and it can be hillarious. And those who seem to excuse lies for situations when they were to lazy to actually care or refused to understand how children perceive the world.
Load More Replies... A lot of these are just lazy. I mean ... your kids do trust you, don't they? You expect them to obey your rules, to tell you when they encounter problems outside, ... lying to them shouldn't be a daily habit, but kept for very rare moments where they really can't handle the truth. It simply isn't ok. Also, don't we have a huge global outbreak of facts-deniery at the moment? Where does it come from that reality is a mere opinion in a lot of people's view? How honest were the parents of that incel with the horn helmet? Did he mess up his mind totally on his own, or may it be that he had a mother who resorted to lies whenever stuff was unfomfortable? Also - if you're uncomfortable telling your children what you do, it likely is wrong anyway, so instead of lying yourself out of the trouble, you can do yourself out of trouble. By not doing what is embarrassing to admit to your kids.
When my parents wanted to take a nap, they said "When i wake up we're gonna clean. Wake me up in an hour." Lo and behold, the house was dead silent and they slept long and deep.
I've tried a variant recently. "If you aren't going to sleep, you are going to clean." And just like that, my toddler picks up her toys instead of laying the F down.
Load More Replies... Some of the "Lies" are not to be taken seriously. Some are lazy, irresponsible parenting and some are cruel. This represents deep character flaws.
One time my dad needed me to do something for him at his house while he was out of town, but my 2 1/2 year old son and I were in watching his favorite cartoon and I could tell by the mood he'd been in all day that if I said we had to go he was going to start crying and it would be a whole scene and I wasn't trying to deal with that at the moment. So I sneakily unplugged the router and told him, "Oh no! We ran out of internet! Let's go get some from Papa's house really quick!" When we got to my dad's I gave my son a big Ziploc bag and told him to open it and run around the house to catch all the wifi while I did what my dad had asked me to do. When I was done we zipped the bag up and headed back home, then I had him dump the 'wifi' onto our router and wouldn't you know it, it started working again!
I love how some people are using Santa Claus as a response to those calling out the horribly lazy parents who refuse to raise their children with discipline and integrity. There is a huge difference between using lies to avoid proper parenting and continuing a lovely innocent tradition that everyone appreciates so much that they carry it on with their own children. For those deliberately obtuse who point out Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, etc: Go suck a rock.
I love the Santa tradition and we practice it in my house, even though my boys are just about too old to believe it anymore :( But just pointing out the Santa myth was originally and continues to be used to manipulate children into 'being good', scaring them with not getting toys, getting coal, or in other cultures even being beaten by 6-8 black men or being taken by a demon if they don't behave themselves. Even the soft, jolly American version can be pretty threatening if you think about it as a child might, 'he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good so be good for goodness sake!'...there's even a tattle tale elf now who will make sure Santa knows all your misdeeds in case he didn't somehow see it with his all seeing eyes. You could easily argue that's also pretty lazy parenting to get a behavior you want, not just an innocent tradition.
Load More Replies... Funny we teach not to lie but we do ourselves. Our toothfairy will tell them to clean up, too. For St Patrick's, we mess up the house a little and our oldest makes traps. The lephrechan gets caught in a trap. I make a really crappy 30 second drawing cutout and put it in the trap and leave a note saying their trap was so good they caught the lephrechan and he turned into paper. They need to clean up and the lephrechan will return back to being alive next year. She is oblivious to things like my hand writing and how the lephrechan wrote a note after turning into paper.
Parents lie because sometimes explaining does not work with the kids. Kids may deny any reasonable arguments. And I know many adults who wouldn't buckle up although they know it saves life.
There's a huge difference between silly lies (santa claus, tooth fairy and such), and not being able to set ground rules and teach your kid to follow them.
Load More Replies... Weird that I chose not to have kids at all because this was the kind of parent I knew I would be... only to find out they are apparently "hacks". "That's right Timmy, wind is caused by the trees waving back and forth".
Long before Walmart and Target, we had to go to a toy store (FAO SCHWARTZ, Toys R Us) for toys and gifts. I convinced my kids that those places were museums and we couldn't touch, just look!
When I was a kid in the 90's we had a minivan with a clock display on the ceiling for the passengers in the back, and it also showed the temperature. Every time we crossed the border into Canada my dad would get our attention so we could watch the temperature automatically change from Fahrenheit to Celsius, and that's how we would know the exact second we crossed. One day in my thirties I was reminiscing about this with my dad when it suddenly dawned on me that he was a dirty rotten liar.
The only lie I ever told my kids was about lying.....They thought their tongues turned green if they lied. I would get them to stick their tongue out when I knew one was lying, the child that refused to stick it out was lying. I don't feel bad in the slightest, they are honest teens now and even I get surprised at the things they own up too so I guess it worked. Oops actually 2 lies, my son believed for ages that I was batman. The secret being that batman is really a woman which is why we had to keep it a secret. He believed it for about a year when he was 5-6 lol.
One time my younger sister really wanted to go to the beach, and we'd been out all day so we were tired and hungry, it was about 5:55, and my mother told her that "We can't, the beach shuts at 6" But hey not too bad.
Times have truly changed. I think for the better. My parents rarely needed to lie. It's either do as you're told or some form of pain is in your immediate future.
Laughing hysterically at the non-parents who judge parents for lying to their kids. Presumably, the same non-parents who judge us for feeding our kids junk food. If you ever have kids, you're in for quite a shock lol.
I'd not judge parents for lying or feeding junk food, do what gets you through the day, but I do think that some people forget that we have all been children. A friend of mind constantly forgets to consider things from the child's perspective and only sees it from the parents. Fair enough, she is one, and there is nothing wrong with that per se but it can be helpful to look back and remember what we liked/didn't like that our parents did. I don't mean ordinary discipline - disliking that is just tough and not a reason to not do it with our children! Just my own opinion of course.
Load More Replies... My very young niece and nephews stayed with me frequently. How did I know they were jumping on the bed? Not that I could hear them, but because I could see them. Through the wall? Yes. How did I know his pjs were under that blanket? Oh, right, because you can see through things. When they asked how I knew, I told them that grown-ups sometimes have super powers and when they grew up , I would tell them all about it so they could have their own super-powers. Took them awhile to figure out I was scamming them. Seat belts unbuckled kept the car from going was actually a car super power of a special option.
Our family tradition is the "liar's spot". My mom told me If I lied a green spot would appear on my forehead. But I could not see it because it was invisible to children and only adults could see it.... I realised how easy it was to spot a lie when years later my niece always came with a hand on her forehead to cover the "spot" so we would not Catch her lying. (It looked adorable but I never did it with my kid. I remember feeling stupid when I understood as a kindergarten age my mom was lying about it....did not want my daughter to feel this way).
The kids aren't getting hurt or damaged so what is the fuss? My son would only eat brocolli if I told him it was baby trees. He eats brocolli and in the mean time he is 30 years old. And he finds the baby trees funny.
My parents: You'll understand when you have children. Me: Doesn't raising a child require giving a flying f**k?
Why are people so afraid of the truth. My son and I laughed about how we disgusted death and deorderent on the same day when he was ten. He battled a catastropic illness and depended on the truth so he could prepare for painfull times, not knowing caused fear.
My favorite came froma Dad to his fractious kids on the subway (metro): "Don't make me turn this train around!"
I'm not a troll but I think it is better to build trust with them instead of lying because if you would lie they will eventually stop believing and obeying you.
When my son was in middle school we were at a restaurant and I ordered a Guinness with my dinner. He begged and begged to try it. After it warmed up a bit I let him have a sip. Oh the face he made! He said oh that's awful! Does all beer taste like that? Yes is does son, yes it does... It was years later before he tried to drink beer again. Saved his high school years at least. Until he was legal to buy his own.
I tell my son that the show he wants to watch that I can't tolerate is broken and we have to check back later.
My wife and I tried not to lie to our kids. Here's why: My mom lied to me all the time, sometimes for no reason at all. I was probably about 7 the first time I caught her lying, and it ruined her credibility with me forever. She's now 84, and if she told me the sun will come up tomorrow, I'd get a second opinion. Her eyes are brown because she's full of s**t. She's not a bad person, she just has a very casual relationship with the truth.
Did you all just skim over the one that said "Don't be judgemental"? Sheesh! You do you and mind your business! Just because they posted about it does not give you the right to judge these people like you all are saints!
The whole point of this being posted is for people to say whatever they want about it.
Load More Replies... I also told my kids that we don't put Xmas lights on the house because the lights indicate where Santa needs to visit. We are lucky enough to be able to visit Santa at the mall!!
