Lies your parents told you

March 4, 2019 8:56 AM

From this twitter thread (“Mine used to say if you ate too much popcorn your poo would float”) comes a memory by @gailsey: “My dad told me I was allergic to strawberries as a child. I’m now 47 and have spent most of my life avoiding them, checking labels and giving hospitals allergy alerts - he’s just told me it was a lie as he ‘wanted to eat them’”, while @EggmanLes remembers “Pretending to talk to the police on the phone about me not tidying my room: ‘They will be here soon’”, @sophiefwv recalls “The ice cream man only played the chimes when he had run out of ice cream.” and @DisorderlyHouse admits “I must have been 4 or 5 when my dad told me men had nipples to detect ghosts. I didn't think to question it till I was an adult.”
posted by Wordshore (146 comments total)

In the days when you had to walk over and turn the channel on the TV (and the kids job was to go change the channel), our carpeted floors meant the occasional static shock. Our mother told us to touch our own nose before we touched the TV. I am pretty sure she just made that up to get us to keep doing it.
posted by Mogur at 9:03 AM on March 4, 2019 [3 favorites]

My old man could "bring the snow" and cancel school, but only when he felt like it. I.E. the forecast called for snow.

Also no calories from food at the movies, but only if you waited until after the previews to start eating it.

And horrible racism and gender essentialism.
posted by Anchorite_of_Palgrave at 9:03 AM on March 4, 2019 [9 favorites]

My mother told me that my eyes would become rectangular if I played on our Commodore C64 too much (a popular saying in Germany at the time, although usually applied to watching TV). I checked in the mirror every day and decided that I was still in the safe zone, obviously.
posted by Skybly at 9:05 AM on March 4, 2019 [11 favorites]

When I was a kid I swore to myself I wouldn't lie to my kids, and I've kept that promise. I swore never to say "because I say so" and I've kept that promise. There's no reason to lie to our kids. They also have occasionally gotten sick of me explaining things, but that's the tradeoff.

At the same time, the kids are not required to like the answers I give, and they're not required to agree with the reasons I have for doing things. Justifying my decisions to them is part of respecting them as autonomous beings learning and developing as people, and parents need to get with the program.
posted by tclark at 9:07 AM on March 4, 2019 [55 favorites]

Of course, there's a difference between silly gags and convincing them they have an allergy just because the parent wants to eat the strawberries, but even then, our gags were never mean-spirited, and most importantly, were always disclosed right away as soon as the prank was complete. We don't play the long game of pranking for months or years and leave the poor kids in the dark indefinitely, because that's kind of mean.
posted by tclark at 9:10 AM on March 4, 2019 [6 favorites]

The "ice cream van jingle means they were out of ice cream" thing totally fascinates me as *so* many people have told me a friend of their's parents used it, I've seen comics talk about it, and I wonder - at what point did it actually first become memetic? Was it actually a common joke played by parents of my generation, or did it just become a shaggy dog story told by my generation about their parents, always happening to a friend of a friend but not ever really true?

Yes, I shall now accept my plate of beans
posted by ominous_paws at 9:11 AM on March 4, 2019 [10 favorites]

1. It is illegal to turn on the interior light in the car while the car is moving.
2. A cat's purr is called a motorboat.
3. The rows of seats at the IMAX theater will move and become a wall before the movie starts, so our legs will be dangling in midair. That was me lying to my niece and she told me I was mean.
posted by soelo at 9:14 AM on March 4, 2019 [10 favorites]

I'm not sure if it was a lie my father told or just something that I misunderstood, but I somehow came away with the impression that if you stepped or sat on a needle, it would work its way inward through your veins to your heart and kill you. Unlike a pin, it didn't have a head to stop it getting into the vein, you see. In particular, if my mother were to sit or step on a needle, it would work its way through her veins and kill her, which would be my fault.

I was allowed to sew from a pretty young age - six, maybe? - and this all was told to me when I had asked for help because I'd lost a needle. I am absolutely certain that the harm was harm that would come to my mother specifically, not to people in general, but I am not sure whether he actually told me that the needle would work inward or whether I got confused.

I believed this for a long, long time, until I was a young adult. Only at that point did I really think "wait, how exactly would that work? why wouldn't it just be like a Much Worse Splinter?"

My father is sometimes a bit of a catastrophizer, and he did tell me a lot of "and then the Very Worst is going to happen" stuff. To be fair, he is also a superb planner and has back-ups and fail-safes that the Culture would envy.
posted by Frowner at 9:14 AM on March 4, 2019 [10 favorites]

I wonder if Yorgos Lanthimos' parents did the same thing to him and that's how "Dogtooth" was born.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 9:15 AM on March 4, 2019 [3 favorites]

I read another article like this a long while back wherein the author told his young child that batteries were powered by bees, and shortly thereafter found her trying to open one to get the bees out. I don't remember my parents pulling anything like this on my siblings and I beyond stuff like "don't swim for at least half an hour after eating" and the like, which were inaccurate medical advice instead of lies.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:16 AM on March 4, 2019 [2 favorites]

I once described churches as "the place where wizards live" to my then 4 year old son, which lead to an awkward conversation after he spent a long weekend at his Catholic grandparents' home. He's 8 now and getting into D&D, so has since corrected the record that nay, it is not the wizards that live there, but the clerics.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 9:17 AM on March 4, 2019 [68 favorites]

My mother told me topiary animals grow that way naturally.
posted by palomar at 9:18 AM on March 4, 2019 [15 favorites]

I swore never to say "because I say so" and I've kept that promise.

Oh boy. I do provide many, may explanations to my kid but I have actually employed, "because I say so." It's usually when I'm trying to simultaneously talk to another adult and what the kid should be doing is not being such a danger or causing such a mess that what I'm actually doing is watching my kid and they are monopolizing my time. And sometimes requiring an extended conversation about things which are common sense just isn't in my wheelhouse in the moment. However, I do sometimes say, "I will explain more later but right now stop that because I'm the mom and I say so." Whew! Had to get that off my chest!

Both of my parents were in the medical profession and I didn't grow up with many fibs. My husband and his sister though got all kind of medical tales and half-truths and thin-air diagnoses. Every now and then, I have to stop one of them and say, "Yeah...but you know that's not how that works, right?"
posted by amanda at 9:21 AM on March 4, 2019 [12 favorites]

I was told that if I went to bed while wearing socks, I would wake up with pig's feet.

Now, rationally I know this (may) not be true, but the lie has such a power over me that I can never, ever wear socks to bed.

A recent partner wanted to wear socks to bed, and I lovingly warned her about waking up with pig's feet. She gave me such an incredulous look -- I suspect this lie may have had some role in her dumping me a short while later. Maybe. Who knows? But I'm not waking up with pig's feet, I know that much.
posted by Capt. Renault at 9:22 AM on March 4, 2019 [47 favorites]

I believed in jackalopes for far longer than you might think because:

a) My dad said the only ones in Northern California were found near the Stanford Linear Accelerator, which he worked near and we drove past/over a lot.

b) He was a nuclear physicist and that's obviously the kind of thing they know about.

The hills around Stanford were also the most common place to sight clockwise and counterclockwise cows, but some reason I caught on to that one much earlier.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:22 AM on March 4, 2019 [20 favorites]

My grandmother told us that if we walked around barefoot and stepped on glass or got a splinter, it would work it's way into our veins and go to our heart and we would die. But she might have believed that.
posted by amarynth at 9:27 AM on March 4, 2019 [4 favorites]

"If you unbutton your belly button, your bum will fall off".

My parents loved to fuck with us in this way, but there wasn't really enough love in the house to make it feel affectionate, it just felt like them taunting us for being younger and more ignorant than them. But I particularly remember that one for its utter nonsensicality.
posted by terretu at 9:28 AM on March 4, 2019 [12 favorites]

Eating the bread crust would make your hair curly.

I so wanted curly hair. It never worked.
posted by obliquity of the ecliptic at 9:29 AM on March 4, 2019 [11 favorites]

"If you eat raw sugar you'll get worms in your bum"

(thanks mom)
posted by Dressed to Kill at 9:30 AM on March 4, 2019 [3 favorites]

ME: *at Toys R Us shopping for a birthday gift for one of my friends* “Can I get this video game?”
DAD: “We'll see.”
ME: *at the check out counter 20 minutes later* “Can I get this video game?”
DAD: “No.”
posted by Fizz at 9:30 AM on March 4, 2019 [14 favorites]

I was told the usual (you'll be sick if you eat raw dough, if you swallow your bubble gum you'll get appendicitis, if you cross your eyes too much they'll stay like that etc). Once I was taught to sing a "Chinese song" which was just gibberish, something I'll never forgive my preschool teacher, but generally I wasn't told any harmful lies. Nevertheless I too swore to tell my children the truth as much as possible.

But sometimes I say "because I said so". Yes, I'd explain my reasons, but I'll cut off the argument when it's clear that we're no longer discussing in good faith.

As to the "wandering needle"... let's just say I know of a case with such name. But the needle was swallowed, not stepped on.
posted by hat_eater at 9:34 AM on March 4, 2019 [4 favorites]

Parents: "If you don't drink your daily spoonful of Cod Liver Oil then all your hair will fall out and you'll be really cold in winter."
Me: "Actually that is not mentioned in the entry for Cod Liver Oil in this book I borrowed from the public library."
Parents: "We're getting a little tired of you keep mentioning facts from books and need to speak to the librarian about how you've got a library card at such a young age."

(skim forward a few years and I escaped farm life and went to university at the first opportunity, spending much of the three years in the library)
posted by Wordshore at 9:35 AM on March 4, 2019 [63 favorites]

If we're talking bizarre medical stuff that the adults in one's family really believed and passed on as useful information, though, I've got some real zingers.

My grandma used to tell us in all seriousness that if one kept the fork in one's mouth too long while eating, one would contract "metal fatigue", which she genuinely believed to be a disease of people.

My dad (yeah, her son) tried to talk me out of eating frozen raspberries straight from the freezer because supposedly I would develop a conditioned he called "chilled stomach". He was unable to give a compelling explanation as to why ice cream or slushies were nonetheless safe to consume.

Finally, and it's kind of a tangent and I'm sure I've said this here before somewhere, my grandparents (yep, same side) weren't at all bothered if my sister or I peed inside their house by accident when we were younger because they habitually described the urine of AFAB children as "maidens' water" and believed it to be fundamentally inert as a substance.
posted by terretu at 9:36 AM on March 4, 2019 [21 favorites]

My uncle had a very prominent Adam's apple and he told me that it was a piece of hard candy he ate that got stuck.

My grandmother used to tell me that she had a giant snake living under her bed.

A teacher at school told us not to run in the rain because we got wetter than if we walked.
posted by Automocar at 9:39 AM on March 4, 2019 [7 favorites]

Eating the bread crust would make your hair curly.

My parents used this with my sister, only it was string beans and having long hair.

A teacher at school told us not to run in the rain because we got wetter than if we walked.

It's not a straightforward question but your teacher was actually wrong.
posted by each day we work at 9:44 AM on March 4, 2019 [7 favorites]

3. The rows of seats at the IMAX theater will move and become a wall before the movie starts, so our legs will be dangling in midair. That was me lying to my niece and she told me I was mean.
Interestingly there's an IMAX-based attraction at Walt Disney World that essentially does just this.
posted by NMcCoy at 9:47 AM on March 4, 2019 [2 favorites]

1. It is illegal to turn on the interior light in the car while the car is moving.

I got this one too, and I... think I'm just now realizing that it's not.
posted by Ragged Richard at 9:57 AM on March 4, 2019 [32 favorites]

you'll be sick if you eat raw dough

The CDC has a webpage literally titled Say No to Raw Dough!

People getting E. Coli. (and sometimes dying) from raw dough is not that unique of an occurrence.
posted by sideshow at 10:05 AM on March 4, 2019 [10 favorites]

"Eat your broccoli, it'll put color in your cheeks."

Maybe, but who wants green cheeks?
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:08 AM on March 4, 2019 [6 favorites]

As my sister was leaving for college, my mother told her that she was allergic to beer. My mother told me that my period would stop when I went into any swimming pool, and this is why I didn't need to use (dangerous) tampons.
posted by xo at 10:10 AM on March 4, 2019 [7 favorites]

My great grandmother told my grandfather that eating chokecherries and then drinking milk would kill him. In truth, it is the seeds that are dangerous.
Apparently some people think the same thing about pineapple and milk or oranges and milk.
posted by soelo at 10:11 AM on March 4, 2019 [3 favorites]

My parents convinced us that the car engine couldn’t start unless it sensed that all of the seatbelts were buckled. I actually think this is a car safety feature that should exist in real life - it seems technologically feasible now!
posted by Maarika at 10:19 AM on March 4, 2019 [12 favorites]

My father liked to call the harmless crane fly an "Amazonian bloodsucker" but I was an insectophile child and he couldn't make me afraid of them.
posted by foxfirefey at 10:19 AM on March 4, 2019 [5 favorites]

My heartfelt promises to be unfailingly honest with my children and never say "because I'm the dad and I said so" did not survive first contact with the enemy.
posted by The Bellman at 10:20 AM on March 4, 2019 [53 favorites]

3. The rows of seats at the IMAX theater will move and become a wall before the movie starts, so our legs will be dangling in midair. That was me lying to my niece and she told me I was mean.

The "Soarin'" ride at EPCOT does this and it is awesome.
posted by Navelgazer at 10:22 AM on March 4, 2019 [4 favorites]

I think my parents learned when I was very young that I would believe absolutely anything said with a straight face that was remotely plausible. They never pulled this crap on me and I don't with my kids either. Maybe my parents just also think it's mean. I do think some of these are funny when I read them but only as an observer.

I still get people trying to do this to me which I suppose isn't that weird but it seems like it to me since we're supposed to be adults in an office doing work. It took me years to stop feeling bad for being 'too gullible' when it happens. Now my thought is that I'm trusting and they're the ones lying, so I'm not going to feel like the jerk in the situation.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 10:23 AM on March 4, 2019 [13 favorites]

my chupahija mother told me that oleander flowers were so poisonous that simply breathing near them would harm me. several homes on my way to way to school had them planted in front and i thought i had to hold my breath past each one.
posted by brujita at 10:26 AM on March 4, 2019 [5 favorites]

Mom to little Abehammerb at a restaurant: "Don't eat the parsley on your plate. It's poisonous."

As a teenager I attempted to save a friend's life by passing this on to them before they ate the most dangerous garnish. They very clearly pointed out, "Are you serious? Why on earth would a restaurant put poison on everyone's plate?"

My mother insists she never told me this, but she did, dear reader, She Did.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 10:34 AM on March 4, 2019 [36 favorites]

My father had us kids convinced that he could open the garage door by saying "open sesame" and that he could close it by saying "close sesame." I only learned later that he was holding the remote garage door opener behind his back, and that he was unfortunately not a garage-door specific magician.
posted by sockermom at 10:37 AM on March 4, 2019 [18 favorites]

My mother used to sing the "We Love You Conrad" song with my name in place of Conrad. I don't know if she actually told me this, but I always believed she made it up just for me.

Imagine my surprise when I walked past my fellow highschoolers rehearsing for a production of Bye Bye Birdie.
posted by Emmy Rae at 10:39 AM on March 4, 2019 [11 favorites]

I feel like telling harmless lies is part of teaching kids about things like sarcasm and imprecise language. I know "harmless" is doing a lot of work there and the fibber can't know for sure the lie will keep being harmless. I like teaching kids jokes and tricks because I think it shows them that the world is more than it seems and full of gray areas.

I never felt bad when I found out my parents had told me one of these lies, but it seems many people do. Some of these lies are used to make the victim feel bad, some are the fastest way to stop the kid from doing something annoying or dangerous, and some are just teaching kids about white lies. Sometimes it is a way of keeping them safe from the ugly truths of the world for just a little longer.
posted by soelo at 10:39 AM on March 4, 2019 [15 favorites]

Not a lie, but when I was 4 or so I pointed to some dust floating in a sunbeam and asked my dad what it was. He told me that without it everything would be dark all the time. I was puzzled but figured I was too young to understand. I was in my teens when I realised he had thought I was pointing at the sunbeam.
posted by gnuhavenpier at 10:41 AM on March 4, 2019 [9 favorites]

People getting E. Coli. (and sometimes dying) from raw dough is not that unique of an occurrence.

Thanks! Yet another reason not to lie to your kids so they don't dump all your useful advice along with the garbage.
posted by hat_eater at 10:42 AM on March 4, 2019 [3 favorites]

Men do have nipples to detect ghosts.
posted by Damienmce at 10:43 AM on March 4, 2019 [25 favorites]

I always thought it was the egg in raw cookie dough but the flour is just as bad. Now I'm wondering if Play-doh pasteurizes or treats its flour. Blech.
posted by emkelley at 10:52 AM on March 4, 2019 [2 favorites]

Related to brujita's comment, my mom once told me that honeysuckle tasted like honey. I asked what honeysuckle was and she said it was the white flowering bush at a neighbor's house. I went to said neighbor's house and ate a petal from a white flower on a bush. It didn't taste like honey.

Later that day, I casually asked my mom if the honeysuckle bush was the one near the neighbor's fence. "No, not that one. That's oleander and it's poisonous."

Flash forward to midnight when I walked into my parents' bedroom and calmly but tearfully told them I was going to die.

Honeysuckle doesn't even taste like honey.
posted by queensissy at 10:54 AM on March 4, 2019 [19 favorites]

When the various Targets were undergoing renovation, there would be some panels missing from the high-up ceiling. My pre-K children saw these dark holes above and asked about them.

"Oh, those are for Ceiling Cat to look down at you."

"What." They were skeptical.

"See, I show you," and I pulled up the more innocent photos of Ceiling Cat on my phone to show them. They are pre-K, they can not read yet.

So now whenever we go somewhere where there are panels missing, they look for Ceiling Cat.
posted by Seboshin at 10:55 AM on March 4, 2019 [61 favorites]

When I was little, me and my sister would play in the ravine behind our house. In the ravine was a creek with a widey-bit that almost made a pond. Naturally, this pond was a great source of interest to us.

Mom told us not to go near the pond, as there was a snapping turtle living in it. My sister and I knew this to be a lie meant to keep us away, and we didn't pay any attention. We played around the pond for years and nothing ever happened.

Fast forward to me being a sulky teen in high school. The ravine was a great place to Not Be In The House. I was throwing rocks in the pond, and then SNAP!!! A snapping turtle jumped up out of the water to eat one of the rocks I'd thrown in.

I was astonished. Mom's lie was actually true. And much, much later when I told her about it, she admitted that the original lie was totally a lie, that she had no idea that there was a snapping turtle living there.

The end.
posted by Capt. Renault at 10:56 AM on March 4, 2019 [54 favorites]

My dad used to tell such dumb lies that when he told us about trichinosis in undercooked pork I didn't believe it because of the "trick" pronunciation.
posted by praemunire at 10:57 AM on March 4, 2019 [21 favorites]

A few years ago, I suddenly remembered that when I was a little kid, I had picked up a crow's feather only to have my dad tell me to put it back because birds come back for their feathers.

I didn't actively think about that reasoning for decades, but I also definitely stopped picking up random bird feathers for decades.
posted by Leviathant at 11:02 AM on March 4, 2019 [10 favorites]

My mother still says "We're not laughing at you, we're laughing with you!"
posted by meinvt at 11:04 AM on March 4, 2019 [3 favorites]

I think an aspect of why it isn't funny to some is that if the parent isn't very good at lying they can wind up teaching the kid that people can just blatantly lie to your face in any context, as a normal everyday occurrence, and you have to go along with it as a mandatory social convention.
posted by XMLicious at 11:04 AM on March 4, 2019 [7 favorites]

My wife's grandmother (born around 1920 in rural Japan) used to tell her that if she wore socks in bed at night she wouldn't be able to run away from the devil. It is cold indoors in the winter in Japan, where homes are unheated. My wife still does not ever wear socks to bed.
posted by JamesBay at 11:06 AM on March 4, 2019 [4 favorites]

ominous_paws: The "ice cream van jingle means they were out of ice cream" thing totally fascinates me as *so* many people have told me a friend of their's parents used it, I've seen comics talk about it, and I wonder - at what point did it actually first become memetic? Was it actually a common joke played by parents of my generation, or did it just become a shaggy dog story told by my generation about their parents, always happening to a friend of a friend but not ever really true?

My mother told me that her parents simply called it the "Jingle Truck," and said it went around playing music, side-stepping the notion that it even contained ice cream for sale. I told my wife this, and we've adopted the "Jingle Truck" name, which is made a bit easier because the ice cream truck that travels in our neighborhood tends to drive through rather quickly, and late in the day.


sockermom: My father had us kids convinced that he could open the garage door by saying "open sesame" and that he could close it by saying "close sesame." I only learned later that he was holding the remote garage door opener behind his back, and that he was unfortunately not a garage-door specific magician.

Before motion-activated faucets were really A Thing, my father tricked his adult sister that one of their relatives had motion-activated faucets, when in fact they had foot-pedal operated faucets.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:06 AM on March 4, 2019 [4 favorites]

These sorts of lies prepare children for the adult world, where most of what people think they know is utter nonsense, and lying is not only common but also expected.
posted by idiopath at 11:09 AM on March 4, 2019 [14 favorites]

My sister told me she gave up on never, ever telling her kids "because I said so" because sometimes trying to give a full answer or explanation led to an endless series of questions, some unanswerable, and she didn't always have the time and/or patience for that.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:14 AM on March 4, 2019 [2 favorites]

My BFF was in her forties when we saw some birds picking at the salt scattered by snow crews on the city streets. She said, "Oh, that's so sad -- those birds are going to die now." What?? "Well, the salt they spread is poisonous! My mother told me so!"

I laughed and pointed out that, while it almost certainly wasn't very clean or pure, it was nevertheless just salt and was a lot more likely to damage the undercarriage of her car than it was to hurt the birds. In fact, that (and cost) is why most towns in our area used plain salt or sand/salt mix rather than ice-melt chemicals.

She stood her ground, and finally in frustration, called her mother to straighten me out. Her mother also laughed. "But Mom, you told me that! Why would you lie to me? I believed you all these years!"

"Daughter, you were five years old and eating rock salt off the sidewalk. How was I to know you'd pick that, out of all the things I tried to teach you, to remember and believe your whole life!"
posted by peakcomm at 11:15 AM on March 4, 2019 [72 favorites]

My dad used to tell me that our fancy dining room table was a wedding gift from the queen of England. I even told my friends, I was so very proud. In junior high or high school, way too late in life at least, it occurred to me to ask my dad if it was true about the dining room table.
posted by stripesandplaid at 11:16 AM on March 4, 2019 [11 favorites]

I think people who say they'll never lie to their kids have not spent much time around 2-6 year olds. It makes not difference most of the time because kids that age are magical realism personified. They will assign bizarre explanations to everything anyway, plus they have long conversations with dogs and goldfish. You may as well tell them whatever keeps them from doing dangerous things and makes your life easier. Plus it's good for them to learn critical thinking skills and to question authority sooner than later.

Having said that I was about 12 when I figured out that if I ran the vacuum over it's own cord I wouldnt really be electrocuted. Which is shockingly old considering my chore was to vacuum twice a week.
posted by fshgrl at 11:27 AM on March 4, 2019 [22 favorites]

My partner used to tell her daughter that crackers were potato chips (crisps) up until about the age of 5-6, when a campout visit with an auntie ruined that...

Myself.. I did a bad thing once... When my daughter was walking and talking and just beginning to understand the world around her, we were buying groceries...

So - I took her through the canned food aisle, explaining and showing her how each picture on a can of fruit or vegetables told us what was inside it. She got the idea very quickly.

Then I took her down the baby food aisle...

(Yes, I came clean right away and explained to her that no, those bottles with smiling babies did not actually contain... well, you know...)
posted by jkaczor at 11:30 AM on March 4, 2019 [24 favorites]

I have I think Korean specific ones from my mom:
- if I don’t eat all my rice I’ll get a pock mark on my face for every grain left in the bowl
- whistling at night attracts snakes so don’t do it
- eating fish makes you pretty (Although I got her with that one when I told her that fish get eaten by bigger fish and big fish tend to be pretty ugly. She laughed and still tells people that story.)
posted by like_neon at 11:32 AM on March 4, 2019 [34 favorites]

My mom told me I could do anything I wanted in life, as long as I worked hard.
posted by a complicated history at 11:41 AM on March 4, 2019 [64 favorites]

I can't remember a single one my parents told me except the light in the car one, which I think my mom actually believed. I remember her explaining it was illegal because it made it hard for the driver to see. I don't think this is a parental lie as much as an urban myth.

Now, my mother-in-law, on the other hand, told my wife that walking on your knees would kill her, and that putting shoes on the table would curse her and her mother would die. To this day if I set down a shoe (which for some reason happens more often than you'd think) on any surface but a floor she panics.
posted by wellifyouinsist at 11:51 AM on March 4, 2019 [2 favorites]

- Onions would put hair on my chest.

- When you lose a tooth, if you go the whole time until the new tooth grows in without putting your tongue in the hole, the tooth will grow in gold. (Dad's explanation of how he got his gold tooth.) In my 30's when I had to get a crown on a back molar, I chose gold over porcelain as a tribute to this silliness.

- Growing up in California, the golden poppy was the state flower. Dad said it was illegal to pick them and that each one was tied to an alarm system and if it was picked, the police would arrive and I would be taken to jail. I am a grown adult and know this is ridiculous, but I have never EVER tested it. Not even on poppies in another state. I don't want to go to jail.
posted by augustinetill at 11:53 AM on March 4, 2019 [18 favorites]

My daughters (7 and 9) currently believe that this is a marshmallow farm.

A couple of years ago, we were driving to a camping weekend where they were VERY excitedly anticipating the s'mores, so when we drove by a farm with those wrapped bales, my wife told them they were marshmallows ready to be shipped to the factories (where they're processed into the bite-sized mallows sold in stores, obviously). A couple of minutes later, we drove by a lumberyard that had a bunch of stacks of 4-by-8s, and I said, "OMG we're so lucky! First a marshmallow farm, and NOW a graham cracker farm!" (They've been on a tour of a chocolate factory, though, and they know cocoa pods grow in tropical climates, so we decided not to push for the trifecta and ruin it.)

They still believed this (at least the marshmallow farm part) as recently as a couple of months ago, and my wife has heard them INSISTING on the story to other kids. It's our proudest achievement.
posted by The Tensor at 11:54 AM on March 4, 2019 [22 favorites]

I think people who say they'll never lie to their kids have not spent much time around 2-6 year olds. It makes not difference most of the time because kids that age are magical realism personified. They will assign bizarre explanations to everything anyway, plus they have long conversations with dogs and goldfish. You may as well tell them whatever keeps them from doing dangerous things and makes your life easier.

No. Letting kids develop their own beliefs about stuff is different from randomly lying to them, and randomly lying to people is not a good way to develop a relationship or to help children form worldviews that will serve them well.

(Signed, someone who raised two children and spent years working with children)
posted by metasarah at 12:08 PM on March 4, 2019 [9 favorites]

Oh! I just remembered another one: My mother used to tell me it was illegal to drive at night with your console light on. I asked her about it last year and she shrugged and basically said "I have no idea why I said that--you were probably messing with it"
posted by Automocar at 12:18 PM on March 4, 2019 [3 favorites]

My dad told me that same fib about a lost tooth growing in gold. Of course, I wasn’t able to keep my tongue from probing the socket more than an hour.

In retrospect, coming to grips with my parents’ lies about Santa Claus — realizing that it was a totally untrue but widely embraced folk tale intended to express social cohesion while manipulating children’s behavior — made it a lot easier to also reject their religious views later on, as well.
posted by darkstar at 12:19 PM on March 4, 2019 [5 favorites]

No. Letting kids develop their own beliefs about stuff is different from randomly lying to them, and randomly lying to people is not a good way to develop a relationship or to help children form worldviews that will serve them well.

(Signed, someone who raised two children and spent years working with children)

Exactly. My mom had a policy of radical honesty in the household: no Santa. No Tooth Fairy. No silly garbage. Her belief was that lying is corrosive to interpersonal bonds because, well, duh.

I owe her a lot for being raised with this value. It's helped me as an adult because this is my normal. Moreover, it did nothing to hamper my development of critical thinking because - like anybody else - my mother was simply wrong about plenty of stuff, and I caught on as I got old enough to put stuff together. Her being straight with me simply led me to trust her good intentions even if we disagreed bitterly.

The truth makes us stronger, individually and in groups.
posted by mordax at 12:25 PM on March 4, 2019 [16 favorites]

Some of you had never had your mom close just the eye that y'all could see and then tell you she had the power to drive down the road with her eyes closed while you screamed in disbelief in the back seat and it shows.

;)
posted by barchan at 12:25 PM on March 4, 2019 [26 favorites]

One of the positive things I will give my dad, is that he explained everything - he had a scientific mind, was quite intelligent and a natural storyteller. So - he never lied about normal things just to get us to stop asking questions. Sure, we did Christmas with Santa Claus, yes there was a "tooth fairy" - and an "easter bunny".

Now... Other family members, they piled on the folklore... "If you swallow your gum, it will stay in your stomach forever"... "If you eat watermellon seeds, a watermellon plant will grow out of your ears"... "If you don't wash behind your ears properly, plants will grow out of them..." ... Breaking mirrors, walking under ladders...
posted by jkaczor at 12:27 PM on March 4, 2019 [3 favorites]

My parents told me that I lost my noisy toy. Turns out I was actually just driving them nuts with it and they put it "away", forever.

I do not begrudge them this particular lie.

Or when I had girls over and mom would come downstairs to 'check on the laundry' which was strangely silent all night.
posted by some loser at 12:30 PM on March 4, 2019 [5 favorites]

We often drove through Argyle, Texas when I was a kid, and my dad told me that's where the socks were made. Why shouldn't I believe him?
posted by emjaybee at 12:34 PM on March 4, 2019 [9 favorites]

My mom had a policy of radical honesty in the household: no Santa. No Tooth Fairy. No silly garbage. Her belief was that lying is corrosive to interpersonal bonds because, well, duh.

Well - yeah, but there are also shared cultural bonds with peers that are essentially lies (Santa, etc.) - and then there is "lying as humor". And then one can argue that religious belief is yet another "lie" - as bad as Santa. Do you tell them Santa is a lie, and then drag them to Church? To some of us, Church is no more true than Santa or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

IMO - there is even sometimes a case for telling your children a fib, to try and get them to think for themselves... Tell them the lie, then ask them if they think it's true... Have a discussion and try to get them to think for themselves and reason things out - rather than blithely trust whatever an authority figure (even a parent) tells them. (They have to be a bit older for this one).

Yes - it may make them a little bit more difficult during their teenage years, because they will be reasoning with you - and you have to interact with them on a more level playing field.
posted by jkaczor at 12:37 PM on March 4, 2019 [4 favorites]

I can't recall things like this being said to me but did in fact sort of do this to myself with things my parents said as explanations for one thing that I took as explanations for all. For instance, when looking at a map one time while we were on vacation somewhere, I was told that if I got lost I should go north to get back home. "What if I'm over here instead of over there," I said, pointing. "Doesn't matter," my mom said, "north is always towards the water."

She of course meant in this town. I took it to mean that no matter where you were, north was always towards the water and it messed with me for years because instead of asking why I was wrong when directions came up in the future, I just kept my confusion to myself and always assumed there must be some body of water closer to where I was that I was unfamiliar with that they were using for their calculation.
posted by dobbs at 12:45 PM on March 4, 2019 [7 favorites]

My father told me outrageous lies that I could generally spot right away, or at least after he spun them out so long that I couldn't help getting it. One exception: when I was five, I asked him what he was going to be for Halloween, and he said, "I'm gonna be a bastard." I believed him and asked what this was; if my mother had not intervened, I would have believed him.

My favorite childhood lie was not told to me as such; apparently, a giant rectangular pile of riprap rocks just outside the city limits, standing unexplained on flat ground like an Irish cairn, was "where Godzilla was buried."
posted by Countess Elena at 12:48 PM on March 4, 2019 [10 favorites]

My parents told me salt cooled food off.
posted by DrAstroZoom at 12:51 PM on March 4, 2019 [9 favorites]

My dad could lay eggs, if he was sitting in his spot on the couch and if I brought him a glass of water. Not from the bathroom, next to the couch but from the Sparkletts bottle in the laundry room. (These would be either the white fake plastic eggs from my kitchen make-believe stuff, or easter-style 2 piece eggs. But usually the white ones.) I looked everywhere, searched that couch for spares, counted the eggs I already had, and never figured it out. At this point, I'm not sure I want to know how he did it. Some childhood mysteries are better left unsolved.

_{I figured at some point, I'd bring my kids over and Grandpa could lay eggs for them, but those kids remain as imaginary as my dad's egg nest. It's a pretty good trick though.}
posted by ApathyGirl at 12:54 PM on March 4, 2019 [12 favorites]

My dad convinced me that the first bite of a slice of watermelon is always the sweetest, so it's best to scoop that bite out and save it to the end.

My parents, on MULTIPLE occasions, got me to eat something that I had just turned up my nose to by proclaiming that they were otherwise 'forbidden' foods. For example - we mostly kept simple kosher (no shellfish, no pork, no simultaneous meat and milk. One night I refused to eat the meatballs mom had made... so they told me to try them again, because they were, in fact, 'pork balls'. And I ATE THAT SHIT UP WITH A QUICKNESS, all the while loudly commenting on how good those pork balls were.
posted by hanov3r at 1:04 PM on March 4, 2019 [12 favorites]

There's lying and there's lying.
My mum is a pathological liar, Trump style. Her lying and gaslighting and bullshitting has harmed me, and my siblings in many ways. One way it hurt is that I still have some difficulty figuring out what people actually mean. Back then, my dad would call me his ugly daughter, and I'd believe him and resign to my fate. He was a prankster, but my mum set the tone.

That aside, today I love pranks. My kids believed for ages that I was a witch. The main reason for this was that our food processor was broken and one needed to insert a chopstick in the broken part to make it work. The chopstick was my wand, Harry Potter style. They know now that it was a prank. It's OK.
My granddad pretended to go out into the hall each Christmas and have a chat with Santa. He didn't dress up or anything, just made the voices. We all knew it was him, but it was a tickle to imagine it was Santa. No harm was done. Gran was very superstitious, and told us all sorts of tales, but grandpa always told her rubbish, so it was fine. Though we'd know not to walk under a ladder or cross a black cat on the road, or eat eggs without bread when she was there. It wasn't worth the drama.
posted by mumimor at 1:08 PM on March 4, 2019 [3 favorites]

Maarika: My parents convinced us that the car engine couldn’t start unless it sensed that all of the seatbelts were buckled. I actually think this is a car safety feature that should exist in real life - it seems technologically feasible now!

My Mom told me the same thing sometimes, but it was true. 1974-model-year cars sold in the US all had this.
posted by Western Infidels at 1:17 PM on March 4, 2019 [10 favorites]

When he was about 3 or 4, we told my son that he had a brother named Walter who was banished from the house for not listening or behaving. "Be quiet, or you'll have to sleep in the garage with Walter." "Eat some fruit or you'll end up with scurvy, like Walter did." Why haven't I met Walter, he asked... "Because Walter is sneaky, and is really good at hiding."

He eventually told us "Walter isn't real." But Walter IS real. He may not actually exist, but we still talk about Walter. My son is almost 10, and for years he has been telling us what Walter got in trouble for today or that Walter didn't do this or that correctly. It's become a family inside joke and we all enjoy it.

I also used to ask him regularly if he'd taken care of the wombat today, which was a reference to a joke I played on my wife way back in high school when she took care of our pets while we were away. I'd included directions for the dog, cat, horse, goat, and added wombat on a whim. "One scoop of wombat chow daily, and don't let him watch too much TV" was the gist of it. (When we got home, she said "You don't have a wombat, do you. Because I have NOT been feeding it.") After a year or so of this, I found a stuffed wombat - so now my son DOES have an actual wombat to care for.

Honestly, I think the lying to kids stuff is half the fun. As long as it isn't done in meanness, and as long as the kids are clever enough to figure out that you're simply teasing. Once they are in on the joke, they get to be part of it too.
posted by caution live frogs at 1:20 PM on March 4, 2019 [11 favorites]

Asks mom for a Pepsi.

"No. It's just sugar and water."

/me fills glass with water, dumps some sugar and stirs and drinks...

/me runs in and yell at my mom how she's a liar.
posted by symbioid at 1:23 PM on March 4, 2019 [4 favorites]

Small me, looking at Dad's driver's license: Dad, what does this L. in between your first and last names stand for?
Dad: Lucifer.
Small me: 8O
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 1:23 PM on March 4, 2019 [19 favorites]

caution live frogs: When he was about 3 or 4, we told my son that he had a brother named Walter who was banished from the house for not listening or behaving.

For some reason, that reminded me of this Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic.
posted by hanov3r at 1:24 PM on March 4, 2019 [5 favorites]

Honestly, I think the lying to kids stuff is half the fun. As long as it isn't done in meanness, and as long as the kids are clever enough to figure out that you're simply teasing

Yeah, for my one nice story above about my dad - an alternate was the time we went to the cemetery to visit the grave of a relative, and he snuck off, hid and proceeded to make ghost/zombie noises... I was about 6-7 at the time, that was kind of mean...
posted by jkaczor at 1:25 PM on March 4, 2019 [2 favorites]

I just texted my son to see if we had told him any fibs when he was young, since I couldn't think of any but I couldn't imagine we were so spotlessly guilt-free. He reminded me of a good one from when he was 5 or 6:

Shortly after we had moved from flat Florida to the mountains of western North Carolina, we were driving down a country road when we saw some cows dotting a grassy hillside. I told him that they were specially-bred cows with the legs on one side shorter than the other side so they could stand on slopes to graze. He was astounded and intrigued, and started asking questions like what if they want to turn around and how do they get back downhill to the barn at night. I spun a few unlikely theories that I assumed were so patently ridiculous that he'd reject the whole business immediately as dad being silly again (which I did a lot, and he was still working on being able to tell), but instead he believed me. I think I waited until we got home later that day to tell him I was pulling his leg.

My sister and I also got the "illegal to turn on lights in the car while driving at night" lie, but when I was a parent I took the one or two minutes necessary to explain that it was hard for me to see out with the dome light on, and that was that.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:26 PM on March 4, 2019 [8 favorites]

I must have been 4 or 5 when my dad told me men have nipples to detect ghosts.

This put me in mind of Lady MacBeth's first act soliloquy:

Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances 50
You wait on nature's mischief! ...

And that made me think there probably is a folk tradition of spirits -- especially evil spirits -- suckling at women's and perhaps men's breasts.

And of course any kind of chill would cause nipples to become erect.
posted by jamjam at 1:40 PM on March 4, 2019 [3 favorites]

I have patches of vitiligo on my hands and curious little ones will inevitably ask me about it. My standard response is to tell them when I was a little baby my mother was doing laundry and accidentally spilled bleach on me.
posted by nofundy at 1:46 PM on March 4, 2019 [6 favorites]

My kids believed for ages that I was a witch.

My uncle told me the best lie: I was the witch. He'd fling his body in whatever direction I pointed.

That's pretty much the kind of lie the adults in my family told. I guess they're more like fun games that we all knew were just games, but it was way more fun for everyone to play along.

There may also have been some significant over-simplification it we asked a question where the answer was maybe a bit too adult. So someone could qualify that as a lie, I suppose.

Maybe some lies by omission? I was going through confirmation classes before I realized that Thanksgiving is not a holy day of obligation. But I think a lot of those weren't really intentional on the part of my parents.

So i guess we're a mostly honest bunch, but not radically so.
posted by ghost phoneme at 1:48 PM on March 4, 2019 [3 favorites]

I think I have posted this previously here —

After my child repeatedly ran from his room, screaming, in the middle of the night, based on his view that monsters were hiding in his closet, I told him that it was time to install an anti-monster device there. I put an old CD jewelbox on the closet’s highest shelf as he watched, and then told him that the anti-monster device was fully operational.

No more monsters. Problem solved!
posted by Mr. Justice at 1:51 PM on March 4, 2019 [15 favorites]

I've been interacting more with small children lately and I do worry a little bit that something I intend as a joke may be experienced as a lie. We do a lot of "I am actually a were-shark, better watch out" and "tell the cats their rent is due"-type riffing because I like doing it, and in general I think the children in question understand that the cats don't actually pay rent, etc. (I maintain that I am a were-shark, of course.) But I'm not totally sure.
posted by Frowner at 1:53 PM on March 4, 2019 [6 favorites]

As a youngster, my wife once got whiny when the onions she was chopping at her mother 's insistence started making her eyes burn and water. She was instructed to hold a stock of celery in her mouth to counteract the onion. Apparently she swore this nugget of wisdom worked until some college roommates convinced her otherwise, rather embarrassingly pointing out that it's difficult to whine with a stock of celery in one's mouth.

Years later, she asked her mother if she remembered the incident. Sadly she didn't, but got a good snorting belly laugh out of it.
posted by 2N2222 at 1:53 PM on March 4, 2019 [14 favorites]

I love to make outrageous claims, but my rule is, if the kid says „really?!“ (or if it seems to upset them, or if they start arguing about it with people) I‘ll tell them it was just a joke. For me, it‘s only fun if we can laugh about it together.

My favourite is something I stole from a Mefite.
Daughter said: „Mommy, are all my teeth going to fall out?“
„Yep, followed by your eyes.“
I read that one on Metafilter when the kid was three years old, and I had to wait three whole years to pull it off. That‘s how much I liked it.

My reward: two kids who like to make outrageous claims.
posted by Omnomnom at 2:05 PM on March 4, 2019 [8 favorites]

My mother told me that my period would stop when I went into any swimming pool

When I was in middle school all the girls got to see a presentation about menstruation, along with a sample pad and belt (it was the fucken olden days, man... 1975 or so.) Anyway, we also got a little booklet about the whole process, and I swear this book said the same thing, that "the flow stops temporarily while you are in the water." I'm pretty sure the book was sponsored by one of the major brands of feminine products at the time.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 2:06 PM on March 4, 2019 [8 favorites]

I was walking with my young son one morning and we saw a snail that had left a trail across the sidewalk but had only made it partway across before the sun dried him up and, well, there he was about three quarters of the way across.

I asked him what he thought had happened. He had no answer, so I said with an air of faux seriousness, "He was dawdling." He puzzled for a moment and then gave me a look that let me know I was busted for my first dad joke.

He just turned 30 and he still busts me for dad jokes.
posted by sjswitzer at 2:24 PM on March 4, 2019 [4 favorites]

My mother told me that my grandmother used a special additive to her pool that would turn purple when you peed in it, like the person who did would be surrounded by a cloud of purple. I didn’t realize this wasn’t true until I was an adult, so I’m pretty certain that I never peed in her pool.
posted by vunder at 3:02 PM on March 4, 2019 [5 favorites]

My brother and sister told me our grandmother’s phone number was 411.
posted by parki at 3:11 PM on March 4, 2019 [4 favorites]

I have I think Korean specific ones from my mom:
- if I don’t eat all my rice I’ll get a pock mark on my face for every grain left in the bowl

My great-grandmother told me that every grain of rice I left on my plate would be a grain of stupid in my future husband's head. She was Chinese.

Funnily enough, my sister and I both remember this and have told our significant others about it. My sister now makes a big production of eating her rice and then saying to her SO, "See? I'M DOING THIS FOR YOU." I usually just leave however much rice is left after I am full, and then my husband will say something like "I R VERY SMRT".
posted by chainsofreedom at 3:28 PM on March 4, 2019 [31 favorites]

When I and my sisters couldn't or wouldn't fall asleep my Dad would give us some water with a few drops of his magic sleeping potion called H2O. It worked every time.

In my defense it was green in color (food colouring and live in Dad's special tool cabinet.

Still remember the exact moment we figured that one out. We were watching The Electric company and they did a segment on water also known by it's scientific name.. H2O.

GEARS.IN.LITTLE.BRAIN.TURNING

Then running, Daaaaaaaaaad!

It's one of the most favourite things my Dad did when we were little. I learned so many little life lessons from that one and I find it hilarious.
posted by Jalliah at 3:42 PM on March 4, 2019 [14 favorites]

Honeysuckle doesn't even taste like honey.

You're doing it wrong. There's a drop of sweet liquid inside the flower (make sure it's turned yellow so it's ripe). Pluck it whole then clip the base with your fingernails, making sure to keep the stamen whole. Pull it out through the flower & the drop of liquid comes with the stamen. Suck the liquid from the stamen. Honey!
posted by scalefree at 3:57 PM on March 4, 2019 [16 favorites]

I used to tell outrageous lies to my kids, but usually spun them out until even a 5-year-old would realize I was joking. I used to horrify them by pretending to tear out one of my eyes and put it in my mouth, my tongue providing a convincing simulacrum.Of course they had the ultimate remedy for this joking around: they'd go to my pragmatic teacher wife, saying "Mom! "Do you know what Dad just said?"

"Aw don't even listen! You know as well as I do that he's full of it!"
posted by Agave at 4:13 PM on March 4, 2019 [2 favorites]

Oh man. The ice cream man one.

We didn't have a lot of discretionary income in our house growing up (although, more and more I've come to realize that my parents were just shitty liars who will die rich, they've owned their own home since I was 10 and I still rent, I digress...). We didn't go hungry, but we didn't eat ice cream often. You got to go to Baskin Robbin's on your birthday once a year.

I was probably like 5 or 6 when my dad's sister was visiting from back east. Cue 5:30pm or so, whenever the witching hour was that the ice cream man drove down our cul-de-sac and back out playing his tune. We were always commanded to be inside by the time this happened, which meant we had never seen him stop at the end of the street, where he sold his wares. WE DIDN'T EVEN KNOW HE HAD WARES.

Aunt Cindy comes wandering into the family room to see me and my younger sisters, noses plastered to the big window, watching him roll by playing his tune. "AUNT CINDY LOOK ITS THE MUSIC MAN!"

The gears must have churned in her head for all of 3 seconds before she reaches into her purse, hands each of us a dollar, and tells us to go give it to the music man. Your mom said it's OK.

My parents were pissed. I wish I could have seen the look.
posted by allkindsoftime at 4:19 PM on March 4, 2019 [31 favorites]

Until I was maybe 8 or 9, my mom had me convinced that the car could not start without the seatbelts fastened. I had even invented occult mechanisms how this could be so to explain it to myself. There was obviously a sensor that could detect a person, with the beeping and indicator light, so it was reasonable that they'd wired that into the ignition in some way.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 4:21 PM on March 4, 2019 [3 favorites]

My uncle told me that if I peed in his spa the water would turn purple. I wasn't that stupid enough to buy it, but I was annoyed enough to prove it wasn't true. Heh heh heh.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:42 PM on March 4, 2019 [7 favorites]

1. It is illegal to turn on the interior light in the car while the car is moving.

Man, my mom got me with this one, too. Dunno why she went with illegal, as she's a terrible night driver and she just could have said "If you turn on the interior car light, it makes it harder for the driver to see what's going on outside the car".

This is so common I wonder about it. I know my parents did tell us about it making hard to see, many times, but it's not like factual explanations shuts kids up.

My sister told me she gave up on never, ever telling her kids "because I said so" because sometimes trying to give a full answer or explanation led to an endless series of questions, some unanswerable, and she didn't always have the time and/or patience for that.

Like so.

Maarika: My parents convinced us that the car engine couldn’t start unless it sensed that all of the seatbelts were buckled. I actually think this is a car safety feature that should exist in real life - it seems technologically feasible now!

My Mom told me the same thing sometimes, but it was true. 1974-model-year cars sold in the US all had this.

I thought I remembered that being true when I was a kid. Whew.

whistling at night attracts snakes so don’t do it

This is strange because the internet mentions this a common bit of Korean, Japanese, or Indian folklore, but I'm sure I heard it as a kid and I have no relation to any of those.

In later life my dad would get a little upset and worried he'd done something wrong when we'd point out some story like this we remembered, and we'd have to convince him it was funny and no harm was done.

Having never had kids I've just had to lie to other people's kids.
posted by bongo_x at 5:01 PM on March 4, 2019 [7 favorites]

That I would get cancer if I touched my freckles. One day I accidentally brushed one and I thought for sure I was going to die that night.
posted by mmb5 at 5:11 PM on March 4, 2019 [2 favorites]

A teacher at school told us not to run in the rain because we got wetter than if we walked

Ha! My 52yo fwb tells me this with a straight face all the time.
posted by annieb at 6:01 PM on March 4, 2019 [1 favorite]

My dad and his brothers shared a bedroom growing up that had a red paint spot about the size of two dinner plates on the floor next to one of the beds. When I was old enough to ask, my dad told me that their other brother Joey had tried to wake him up too early one morning and been pounded flat.

When I was a kid my dad made up stories for me every night at bedtime. They always started with, "once upon a time when I was a little girl just about your age..." The stories often ended up with my dad discovering an island with a name so weird that he must have invented it - Easter, Kaui (Cow Eye), etc. When I told him it was fake he'd bring my globe over and show me the island.
posted by bendy at 6:01 PM on March 4, 2019 [7 favorites]

Well now folklore doesn't count as lying to kids. You want them to be part of the folk, don't you? You don't have to make them believe it, but they should know. My mom would tell me things on this basis. She told me that if you find a wild bird's eggshell, you should crack it with your foot so that a witch can't use it as a boat, and if you hear a ghost, you should ask it, "What in the name of the Lord do you want?"
posted by Countess Elena at 6:04 PM on March 4, 2019 [5 favorites]

I think an aspect of why it isn't funny to some is that if the parent isn't very good at lying they can wind up teaching the kid that people can just blatantly lie to your face in any context, as a normal everyday occurrence, and you have to go along with it as a mandatory social convention.

Funny, I think that the purpose is the exact opposite: they learn that people may be lying and you do not have to go along with it. However, it seems that some people treasure their parents' never lying about anything to them, and others treasure their parents constant fibbing (I prefer that to "lying," because a fib is supposed to be found out while a lie isn't). Maybe the important part is that your parents love you and have your best interests at heart?
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 6:36 PM on March 4, 2019 [16 favorites]

When I was a kid, my acrophobia was way worse than it is now, and on a family trip to St. Louis, I dreaded the thought of going up in the Gateway Arch, and when it finally came time to do so--it was the culmination of the trip--I refused to go. My mom, rest her soul, told me that she'd leave me in the car and hippies would come to rob me and beat me up because I had no money. I still wouldn't go.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:38 PM on March 4, 2019 [6 favorites]

Never prank anyone who will be choosing your elder care solution.
posted by nfalkner at 6:47 PM on March 4, 2019 [8 favorites]

I don't remember any lies my parents told me, but I make a point of not telling my kids any.
But I wasn't always like that. My little brother was born when I was ten and a half, and I ended up doing a lot of child care.
I don't remember most of the lies I told my little brother, but it was a daily (maybe hourly) thing. Things like "If you don't learn to levitate before you go to kindergarten, you'll be the only kid there who can't."

At one point our mom came to me and told me that he had told her that he didn't like that he could never know for sure if I was telling the truth. I felt really bad about that and made him a promise. There was a specific wording he could use to ask if I was lying, and I would always, always answer that one question honestly. I didn't put a time limit on it.

So, now that we've both been adults for decades, I still consider myself bound by it. But I did find a solution. I transitioned. The wording of the question was ", are you lying." Since he's a good brother, he'd never use that name now. I may be the only trans person to transition just to get out of an ill-considered promise. At least, that's what I tell him.
posted by Tabitha Someday at 6:49 PM on March 4, 2019 [11 favorites]

dancing leaves: "We'd like to sing a children's song for you now, that's unique. It's the only children's song that we've ever encountered that contains all three of the basic elements of every single children's song. The first element is simplicity, so that the child can understand the song. The second element is pathos, to prepare the child for later traumatic experiences. And the third element is repetition, to give the child a false sense of security."

OMG, this - this was part of a wonderful PP&M live concert that I used to have on cassette tape, and I didn't even know I'd been missing for years. Does anyone know which album this is, and how I might get my hands on it?
posted by RedOrGreen at 6:55 PM on March 4, 2019

Kinda late to the game but...

I was told that if I didn't stop cracking my knuckles they'd grow as big as Rhode Island.

Nope. Not even close. Damn.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 7:17 PM on March 4, 2019 [4 favorites]

hippies would come to rob me and beat me up because I had no money. I still wouldn't go.

Well?? Don't just leave us hanging like that! Did some blissed-out proponents of peace'n'love thrash you for being a penniless child?
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:24 PM on March 4, 2019 [3 favorites]

Excellent. Previously.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:39 PM on March 4, 2019 [2 favorites]

Shortly after we had moved from flat Florida to the mountains of western North Carolina, we were driving down a country road when we saw some cows dotting a grassy hillside. I told him that they were specially-bred cows with the legs on one side shorter than the other side so they could stand on slopes to graze.

An important aspect of this is that there are two breeds of cow, clockwise and counterclockwise. Clockwise cows have longer legs on the left side and so can only travel around hills in a clockwise direction. Counterclockwise cows of course have the longer legs on the right.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:19 PM on March 4, 2019 [5 favorites]

I told my children many, many "lies", usually casually on the fly. (I usually fessed up in short order.) It taught them to think for themselves. You could just see their little gears turning. So cute! They are now full grown and reasonably self-sufficient. Ergo I am a great dad.
posted by M-x shell at 9:26 PM on March 4, 2019 [5 favorites]

We had a 1974 Datsun with that seat belt interlock. I was in high school at the time, so there were no mysterious stories about it, but it was gifted to me when I graduated from college five years later. That car got me in the habit, unbreakable to this day, of never driving without wearing a seatbelt.

(If I remember right, the interlock only applied to the driver and front passenger seats, which meant if you put anything in the passenger seat over a certain weight, the seat belt still had to be buckled.)
posted by lhauser at 9:29 PM on March 4, 2019 [1 favorite]

In our general parenting, my spouse tells tales too outrageous to be believed and I am factual to a fault. (I also frequently start laughing when he's spinning tales.) However, I did tell my daughter, at preschool age, that she could always ask the tiny dinosaurs who lived inside the car to open her window for her. They liked to be warm and in the summer would frolic freely about the car. When it got colder, though, they curled up by the engine where it was warm and so the windows stayed closed then.

In my defense, she also told us awesome stories which we believed as well.
posted by Margalo Epps at 9:52 PM on March 4, 2019 [6 favorites]

An important aspect of this is that there are two breeds of cow, clockwise and counterclockwise.

IIRC this is originaly an Swiss species of alpine goat.
posted by each day we work at 1:19 AM on March 5, 2019 [2 favorites]

This past Christmas I put the tree lights on a remote switch because my two year old kept hitting the foot switch over and over and it was annoying as hell.

One morning I (the parent who swore he would never lie to his kids) convinced her that she could turn the lights on by clapping. I of course timed the remote button to her claps. She was delighted!

That is, until the next morning came and she tried to clap the lights on and got very sad when it didn’t work. The look on her face convinced me to return to the “no intentional lies as much as possible, even when they’re delightful” policy.
posted by zrail at 1:59 AM on March 5, 2019 [1 favorite]

Spiders can swim. So if we flush them down the toilet, it's OK, because they will swim away...

Also, our local church (big, granite, grey and imposing) was Castle Greyskull. I was very confused about this as I used to go there for Brownie Guides and never saw He-Man.
posted by sedimentary_deer at 2:29 AM on March 5, 2019 [4 favorites]

Spiders don't swim, necessarily, but they don't breathe the way we do and can stay alive in water for a long time.

My father used to always joke that "If you don't eat your crusts, you'll never learn to whistle!" It was clearly tongue-in-cheek, but said so cheerily that you were never sure how earnest it was. Was the in-joke that it was true, or that it was false?

I started using it to tease adults at lunch who refused to eat the crusts of their sandwiches. On more than one occasion they've looked alarmed and said, "You know, I never did learn to whistle!"
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:50 AM on March 5, 2019 [4 favorites]

Told my son about jackalopes this summer while on a trip out west. He wasn’t sure he believed me, but he knows I’ve got a zoology degree so I know stuff about animals. He did try to keep an eye out for them but didn’t see any, so was beginning to think I was pulling his leg. Then we stopped at Wall Drug, and he saw an entire wall of mounted jackalope heads and some full-body mounts as well. He was beaming. He ended up buying a stuffed animal jackalope to remember the day he decided they were real. I mean, they wouldn’t have them stuffed and mounted if they were fake, right??
posted by caution live frogs at 5:27 AM on March 5, 2019 [6 favorites]

>> An important aspect of this is that there are two breeds
>> of cow, clockwise and counterclockwise.
>
>IIRC this is originaly an Swiss species of alpine goat.
>

An excellent chance to discuss convergent evolution with your child.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:29 AM on March 5, 2019 [1 favorite]

Jackalopes are real, though, sort of; they're rabbits infected with a particular virus that causes hornlike growths on their faces. Probably not like the ones that are sold in tourist souvenir shops, though.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:33 AM on March 5, 2019 [1 favorite]

This many comments and no mention of Calvin’s dad yet? For shame!
posted by tdismukes at 6:34 AM on March 5, 2019 [9 favorites]

My Mum told me that if girls whistle the Virgin Mary cries. I do not have time to unpack everything in that rn
posted by billiebee at 6:42 AM on March 5, 2019 [8 favorites]

My dad was a pathological liar, which makes this all vaguely traumatic, albeit still amusing.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:10 AM on March 5, 2019 [1 favorite]

My Mum told me that if girls whistle the Virgin Mary cries. I do not have time to unpack everything in that rn

A whistling woman and a crowing hen are neither fit for God nor men.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:47 AM on March 5, 2019 [3 favorites]

Calvin’s dad was essentially the dad I wanted to be (the world was black and white before Kodak invented color, and artists who painted in color before then, well, artists are crazy bit was one of my favorites). I do understand the importance of building trust with children, but I also believe skepticism has a value, too.

That said, I have changed my views on this over the years: a friend of my father’s always told his kids that you could fit a quart of liquid into a pint container as long as your poured fast enough. Sadly, his daughter believed him for far too long, and one day, her home ec teacher came running over to find out why there was orange juice all over her table, and the daughter tearfully said “I didn’t pour fast enough!”

I used to love that, but now, not so much. Haha fun tales and jokes that stay in the home, that get debunked and turned into family in jokes, sure, but letting kids take your lies into the world, not a fan.
posted by Ghidorah at 8:47 AM on March 5, 2019 [5 favorites]

A whistling woman and a crowing hen are neither fit for God nor men.

That's interesting! I've never heard that before so had no idea the whole concept didn't originate in her crazy wee mind.
posted by billiebee at 9:01 AM on March 5, 2019 [1 favorite]

When I was seven or so, my new stepfather told me never to press the ejection seat button on his Pontiac Firebird. I spent years trying to puzzle through the mechanics of how it would all work, completely ignoring the icon of a lit cigarette on the button itself.
posted by kawika at 11:11 AM on March 5, 2019 [4 favorites]

My dad used to show off by biting off and eating the tips of hot chili peppers - because that's the hottest part - and then daring us to taste the remainder of the pepper. It's only recently, decades later, that I've noticed that the tip of a hot pepper is the mildest part.
posted by moonmilk at 11:21 AM on March 5, 2019 [8 favorites]

I told him that they were specially-bred cows with the legs on one side shorter than the other side so they could stand on slopes to graze.

An important aspect of this is that there are two breeds of cow, clockwise and counterclockwise. Clockwise cows have longer legs on the left side and so can only travel around hills in a clockwise direction. Counterclockwise cows of course have the longer legs on the right.

I was pretty sure I read something similar - although regarding certain breeds of mountain goats rather than cows - years and years ago in some book on folklore and tall tales.

A quick bit of Google found me the French Dahu, which includes a link the the American Sidehill Gouger.

So at least in this case y'all are carrying on the fine American tradition of tall tales.
posted by soundguy99 at 10:15 PM on March 5, 2019 [5 favorites]

TIL that picking lady slippers--the State Flower of New Hampshire--is not illegal. In fact they're not particularly rare. Off to google jack-in-the-pulpit now.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 1:54 AM on March 6, 2019 [2 favorites]

A quick bit of Google found me the French Dahu, which includes a link the the American Sidehill Gouger.

Awesome.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:57 AM on March 6, 2019 [2 favorites]

Not a lie my parents told me, but when I moved to Australia, everyone - all my friends and colleagues - warned me to look out for the fierce drop bears.

It's particularly ironic since Australia is legit full of creatures that can casually kill you in horrifying ways - those box jellyfish washed up on the beach in pretty abstract patterns, those little brown spiders, those pretty cone snail shells, those cuddly kangaroo herds and that chunky wombat crossing the highway ...
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:41 AM on March 6, 2019 [3 favorites]

Not a lie my parents told me, but when I moved to Australia, everyone - all my friends and colleagues - warned me to look out for the fierce drop bears.

Hey, the Australian Museum itself has records of them, and they would know.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:35 AM on March 6, 2019 [3 favorites]

A whistling woman and a crowing hen are neither fit for God nor men.

The way I heard it was "Whistling girls and crowing hens are sure to come to some bad end."
posted by Lexica at 10:27 AM on March 6, 2019 [2 favorites]

Not from my parents but my brother told me that Jean Claude van Damme died in the making of Street Fighter. And I believed him until like 2010 because he didn't come out with any more movies until then!

Also, my sister was too young to see Jurassic Park when it came out in the theatres and my brother and I told her that aliens came down and took out all the dinosaurs at the end of the movie. Even when she was old enough, she didn't watch it for such a long time because she figured she already knew the ending.
posted by LizBoBiz at 3:54 AM on March 7, 2019 [5 favorites]

aliens came down and took out all the dinosaurs

Nature finds a way.
posted by asperity at 8:02 AM on March 7, 2019 [2 favorites]

I had a father who lied quite a bit. He could be charming, but frankly he was a con - man. The bad part was you had to sort of go along with his cons. It was very hard to know what was truth and what was lies. He also had secrets which he *had* to keep.
It hurt my relationship with him quite a lot. He was fairly intelligent. So his lies were not your average lies. Then there was my mother who actually lived an underground life for awhile. The thing I learned about lying is that sometimes you pretty much have to lie, to preserve your own life and the lives of others. There really are times it is necessary to lie, and to do so skillfully.
The rest of the time, because lying and secrecy are corrosive, one must deal in the truth.
Certain very popular lies, like Santa and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy May do no huge harm, but they don’t do any real good either. Later on you’re going to have to tell that kid the truth about something hard and a prior record of not doing your best to tell the truth will hurt you.
Like when you need to explain things like why not to take drugs or join a gang, or why not to over- value expensive brand name stuff, or how to detect propaganda.
I figure a parent’s honest ignorance and errors do enough damage between parents and children.
Why add to it with something silly? Yes my kids got ‘Santa’ presents. They knew those presents were surprises, from people who just wanted to do something nice and did not expect a ‘Thank You ‘ note. I took a lot of flack for the decision I made on this. I probably could have displayed both a Hammer and Sickle flag and a Revolutionary Guard flag on the living room wall and the neighbors would have just gulped and said ‘Well allrighty then!’ But no Santa, I was hit with arguements in favor of Santa. We didn’t actually do Christmas. Did we like the lights and trees? Certainly, but again, it was not our holiday. These were not our stories. Also it was an especially tense time for me when I was growing up. One secret my father carried was that he was Jewish. On his mother’s side. My mother did not like the entire holiday season because my grandmother was an alcoholic and really got out of hand that time of year. We all actually enjoyed Christmas in Mexico. It was probably because at that era it was so different from North American Christmas. The 3 Kings, Posadas, and massive neighborhood parties with piñatas...
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 5:33 PM on March 9, 2019 [3 favorites]