When the subject is parenting, everybody lies. There are the lies we tell our children ("Of course there is a Santa Claus;" "Mommies always come back"), the lies we tell our partners ("Yes, I stuck to the bedtime routine while you were out") and the lies we tell ourselves ("I don't miss my old life one bit").
Then there are the lies we tell other parents. The Netmums website took a look at one of these this week, finding that more than one-third of online respondents lie about their children's sleep habits -- pretending the little ones are sleeping through the night when really they aren't.
Why do we lie to each other? Netmums concludes it's because we think everyone else is perfect at this parenting stuff and we fear being judged. Thinking back on my own lies, I realized many do fall into this category. When friends asked how the early days were going, I didn't mention that I cried constantly and wished I could give the baby back. When talk turned to setting rules for toddlers, I alluded to limits on TV time and junk food without mentioning how often those limits were exceeded (or, to be completely honest, totally ignored). When others rhapsodized about how their teens told them everything, I didn't admit to the silent chasms opening between me and my sons. I made all these choices because I was pretty sure I was doing it wrong and others were doing it right.
But most of my lies -- the much more important ones -- were rooted in something else entirely. Like the fact that anxiety, not illness, brought one boy home from sleepaway camp after only a few days. Or the number of tutors it took to navigate high school. Or the details of a kidney condition that left us frightened about the future.
I lied not to protect myself, but because these were not my truths to tell. In all of these cases and so many more (I can't tell you about the more, for the same reason I didn't admit to these in real time), it was their privacy I was guarding, their secrets I was keeping.
You can argue that we aren't really helping our kids with our veil of untruth. In an essay about lying on HuffPost Parents today, Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser talks about fellow blogger Katie Allison Granju, and the years Granju spent writing about parenting without once mentioning that her son, Henry, had been wrestling with drug addiction. "She hadn't written about his struggle or her family's to help him, or his rehab experiences, until he'd relapsed and endured a beating and was left helpless at the scene -- from which he never fully recovered," Buttenwieser writes. After Henry died from that beating, she writes, Granju "confessed that she did not believe her silence had helped her son nor protected him -- and that it certainly hadn't helped her as a parent."
As Granju well knows, there is something lost in all the lying. It perpetuates the fable that everyone else has got this down, and we are the only ones struggling. It robs us of support -- had I confessed my postpartum demons more freely, I would have gotten the help I needed much sooner; had Granju written of Henry's drug use earlier, who knows what help that might have brought -- and it deprives others of our hard-won wisdom. It leaves us parenting in a Potemkin village, when we desperately need a real, three-dimensional one.
The solution? To tell the truth more freely -- when we can. If it is our own image we are defending, that is not a reason to lie, however tempting that might be.
But if it is our child's, then fabricate as needed. In both cases, take some comfort from the fact that everyone around you is doing the same.
Follow Lisa Belkin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lisabelkin
I will say that our culture of putting a positive spin on everything - especially parenting - is problematic. A positive attitude helps everything, of course. But when things are dreadful, in other cultures it's acceptable to say as much and then potentially to work to resolve the issues. When we pretend, we have less of a chance of resolution or the solace of genuine community.
I believe in being real. I do not advocate lying. But we each must make measured choices in telling our stories, in part because our culture is rife with self-righteousness, judgment, shaming, and stigma. Whatever choices we make, we do so with as much knowledge and experience as we can, aware that respecting privacy is a core value to some of us - and to our families.
A good side effect (though not the real aim) is that I can ask them to tell the truth as well, saying "I never lie to you, so don't lie to me". Then they always tell me who broke that vase.
Lying is NOT necessary, no. And not everybody does it. That's just an excuse.
From where can your authority and license as a parent come from, when you who are old, do worse things?
Juvenal
here's a truth: my kids freaking want to play Minecraft 24/7 and I have to give them a timer when I throw them outside: "You can't come in for 20 minutes!!!" But sometimes I don't mind the crack that is Minecraft because I work at home during the day and summer is a killer.
I can't relate to this article in any way, other than to say that the author needs to cultivate actual authentic friendships, in which one can bare their parenting, and mothering soul, and reach out to find the solutions...we have nothing if we don't have support, and support is never found in half truths and defensive measures. Kids are hard, and not that unusual. The only thing that makes them seem strange is our collective fear about disclosing how difficult this job is. Sing it from the rafters while you simultaneously sing your love for them ~ women will flock to you. You will have community of wonderful, loving, intelligent women........with totally normal kids.
You shouldn't stop reading an article just because you don't agree with the first few paragraphs of it. Really, I learned the lesson about judging books by their covers a very long time ago.
Parenting is messy and scary and hard. It is also wonderful and fun and miraculous. I do my best to share openly with other parents about my experience; if I can help at least one other mother feel less isolated or alone on her journey then I will be truly thankful.
I wrote a whole post about the importance of honesty between mothers. I would love to hear your thoughts,if you have a chance to read it:
http://www.loracarroll.com/the-gift-honesty/
It is helpful to know you're not the only parent grappling with these and even much more important issues.
Though I've found sometimes sharing the truth gets some odd responses. For example, our kids tend to go to bed much later than their peers. My wife and I just like hanging out with them, and we live relatively close to their schools, so they don't have to wake up ridiculously early. But when we tell other parents when our kids go to sleep, the reactions are often pretty funny.
Usually, they don't understand why we'd let them stay up so late, but sometimes you get that look back like, "Don't you know kids need 17 hours of sleep a night??? What's wrong with you terrible parents?"
Oh well, at least we're honest.