At the time,I laughed and reassured him the present count wouldn’t change just because he’d busted me. But afterwards,it got me thinking about why I’d lied in the first place and why I’d kept it going for so long.
Teenagers are biologically driven to break away from their parents.Getty Images
It wasn’t only the concept of Santa that I introduced to my children. I also wrote letters from fairies,left a coin under their pillows when they lost a tooth,and hid Easter eggs around the house. As soon as my children were old enough to believe,I began lying to them.
It is not only;children do too. In fact,it is an important developmental stage when children understand their parents cannot read their minds,and so they begin inventing untruths.
When he was little,my son would eat all the biscuits in the jar and then feign surprise when I asked about it. I always knew it was him,but he tried hard to make me think it was his sister,his dad or even the rat that lived in the backyard.
As parents,we are masters at justifying why we should lie to our children. I know I have lied to exert control when I am afraid for them. We lecture on the dangers of alcohol,smoking and drugs like we’ve never dabbled in these things ourselves. My teenagers roll their eyes now when I mention certain subjects,mocking the narrative they’ve heard a hundred times. I still remember my daughter finding a black-and-white photograph of a very young me smoking a cigarette with my friend. She was understandably unimpressed given how much I’d warned her about the dangers of nicotine addiction.
Recently,I was talking to friends about whether our underage teenagers drink at parties. Some of us were willing to admit they probably did. Others were not,preferring to believe that if they said they didn’t,then they didn’t.
Sometimes we are uncomfortable about the idea of our children lying to us. It makes us worry,doubt their safety,suspect their motives. Then I remember all the times I lied to my parents,believing them to be so naive they couldn’t possibly see through my elaborate stories. I lied about where I was,about not having homework,about when really,I flushed it down the toilet. But my lies were transparent to my parents,and they chose to allow me to keep them,all the while knowing that what I was actually doing on a Saturday night was probably fairly close to what they had done a generation before.
Once I came home drunk and vomited for hours. Mum knelt beside me and held my hair back while I told her it was food poisoning from the chicken,never mentioning the six-pack of Island Coolers I drank over the evening. Later,Mum liked reminding me of that night,laughing about it and teasing me that my own children would soon do the same. Though I’ve never had to hold back hair,I have had some frank conversations with my eldest child now that she’s moved out about all the times she lied. It’s been bonding,in a way,understanding that no matter how close we are to our children – or to our parents – there are still small lies being told. We always called them fibs when we were kids,like somehow that took the sting out.
As a teenager,I lied to my parents to flex my independence. But even when I lied,I always knew I could phone them in the middle of the night and that they’d come and rescue me,bring me a cup of tea in the morning,and love me just the same. Basically,they trusted me,understanding that as a teenager,it sometimes feels important to lie to your parents,to pretend you’re pushing a boundary that doesn’t really exist.
I try to be more honest with my teenagers now,hoping that it rubs off on them,but knowing also there are secrets they need to keep.
Nova Weetman is a writer for books,film and television based in Melbourne. Her latest book is the memoirLove,Death&Other Scenes.
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