My Daughters are Liars

Watching your kids grow up is a crazy thing. You’re the one raising them, you see them every day, and in theory you know them better than anyone in the world. Yet somehow you still learn new things about them all the time. For example, I recently learned my daughters were filthy liars.

Kids lie. Usually it is small little fibs based around trying not to get in trouble, like saying that the Easter Bunny was the one who drew on the wall. An obvious falsehood that is more silly than anything. However, my kids have crossed over from little white lie to purposely malicious slander. I’m not sure what is more distressing. That they had it in them in the first place, or that they carried it out with such little remorse.

Let’s get in the way back machine and take a trip back to the fall of 2023, about two years ago exactly as I write this. My son was 3 then, and was struggling with not being able to stop biting his sisters. Fairly often one his sisters would come and show me bite marks telling me that Brooks bit them. I’d ask him. He wouldn’t deny it. He’d be punished. The same thing would happen again a few days later. He eventually got over it, and we’ve all moved on. Or so I thought.

Then one night, well after their bedtime, my daughters came out of their room with the urgent need to tell me something. Usually their urgent post-bedtime needs are to find out what snack or dessert Mom and Dad are having, but this one was different. They looked very serious, almost somber. They said they needed to tell us something. They said they were in their room talking and just felt so bad that they started to shake. I did’t know what to expect, but I assumed somebody broke thing of mine. However, rather than get an apology for accidentally breaking my whatever, I got a confession.

They framed their little brother for dental assaults he didn’t commit. They explained that while a couple of times he did bite them, there were also several times where they bit their own hands to make the marks, then come show me and told me Brooks did it. Their motive? Because they wanted to play by themselves. I sent them back to bed and told them we’ll deal with it in the morning.

Let me unpack this. Rather than just telling him they they wanted to play a different game or that they wanted to just have some sister time, they decided to fabricate the evidence to falsely accuse their brother – who, mind you, is just three years old at the time – of something that they know will cause him to be punished, and punished pretty severely. We couldn’t get him to stop biting so we were trying lots of things – toys taken away, being sent to his room, soap in his mouth, firm yet appropriate (no need to call CPS here) spanking. And they sat back and watched it happen so that they could get him out of their hair so they could play a pretend game of Lego store without him hanging around.

How confused must that poor little guy have been? Yes, sometimes he did bite, so some of punishments were valid, but sometimes this kid probably thought that his sisters hated him and that Dad was a bully. I think part of him genuinely things I am mean, or that I don’t like him as much as I like his sisters. I can clearly see how administering baseless punishments undermines the best buddies relationship I’m trying to build with the little fella. To quote the great Jim Croce, some women, they are liars. And some just got no sense. But a woman like you ought to be ashamed of the things that you do to men. Those diabolical little bitches.

My daughters were 5 and 7 at the time. Already deceitful and plotting at that age. Couldn’t (and still can’t) always writing their numbers and letters facing the right way, but able to scheme their way into getting what they want at the the expense of others. A potential future in politics or business aside, what the hell is that? Where would they learn that? Is it some kind of instinct? Pretty sure that was never a plot line on Fancy Nancy, or whatever they were watching obsessively at the time. At least I don’t recall any episode where Nancy convinced her parents that JoJo has an unbreakable violent streak in her. Is it something they picked up at school? At share time, did one of the other kids in their class tell them all about how they conned their Dad into sending a sibling to their room for hours and that somehow created a light bulb moment for my daughter? I think I would like to think it was some outside influence, but the reality is that my daughters just had it in them.

And that sucks. Now I have to question everything they tell me, and I do, to their faces. Oh, you said you didn’t have a snack yet? Well, you also said your brother bit you, so wait until dinner. Though, more seriously, what if they come to me with tales of other physical altercations. Did your brother push you? Did a kid a school hit you? Where does it end? They are little now, but what are they going to tell the truth and/or lie about when it comes to teenage boys? We have a lot of time between now and then, so I’ve got to make sure I use it to make sure they understand that the truth matters.

It is also very unlikely that they arrived at this plan together. There had to have been one person that came up with it and one person that went along. My gut says my older daughter hatched the plot. However, it was almost always my younger daughter who came showing the planted bite marks. So even if she was something of a coerced accomplice, she was bought into the plan enough to bite herself and come tell me the lie. In a way, I guess I shouldn’t have expected a five year-old to stand up for her herself and not go along with the ideas of her holder sister. But in a better way, why shouldn’t I? We teach them wrong from right, we teach them to tell the truth, we teach them how to be kind. Why are we teaching our kids these things if not to give them the tools to stand up for what is right and tell somebody no, I am not going to frame our toddler brother causing bodily harm so we can play pretend school with out him bugging us. I mean, if there was ever a use case for having even the early stages of a moral compass, this seems like an easy one find true north.

The silver lining I find is that they eventually did come clean. Why it took them the better part of two years, I have no idea. Clearly is was stuck back in their brain somewhere causing them a slow burn of guilt. Maybe it is because I grew up Catholic, but I think it is part of a parent’s job to instill some guilt in their children. Sure, I’d rather instill in them the firm understanding of right and wrong and the fortitude to stand up for what they know is right. But some guilt will do in a pinch. They also haven’t been caught in any criminal conspiracies since. At least that I know of. I guess we’ll have to check back later. It has been over a year since my wedding ring went missing, let’s pencil in a late night confession for a few months from now, shall we?