Thou Shall Not Lie

Like many of you, we are trying to instill good habits, behavior and manners in our children. And of course one of the house rules is that we do not lie. Though lying is not the behavior we struggle with most in this house, I do sometimes wonder if our kids hear anything we say regarding behavior. Well, apparently they do, but why does it always have to work against me??! Ok, here's the story...

Next summer, we are planning a large family vacation to Gatlinburg, TN with my whole family. For those of you who do not know, Gatlinburg is right next to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park and the whole area is supposed to be beautiful and full of family activities. One of these activities is a zip-line through the mountains and I could not be more excited about this! So anyway, we've been talking a lot in our house about our vacation and showing the boys different websites about the various activities. The zip-line website said that you could ride if you were 5 years old or over. At the time of our trip, Colin will be 2 months shy of 5 years old. I very casually said, "Hmm, maybe we could just pretend that Colin is 5 so he can ride the zip-line." Colin stared at me with huge eyes and said, "Mommy, isn't that lying?" Um, well yes, actually it is! So before I could come up with a way to sugarcoat that, both Andy and Colin start telling me how it's wrong to lie and we'll get into trouble for lying and God tells us not to lie, etc etc etc. Meanwhile, Kyle is laughing out loud at me and not trying to rescue me at all. Finally, I had to agree with them and say that yes, lying is wrong, but that wasn't what I really meant. What I meant was that maybe we could tell the zip-line people that Colin is ALMOST 5 and can he please ride anyway! (Yeah sure, that's what I meant! I fully intended to lie about his age, but my children will have none of that!!!)

I suppose I could look at this in a glass half-full kind of way and be happy that our children are actually listening and remembering (sometimes) what we try to teach them. And what strong moral fiber they have to be so opposed to horrible things like lying! But really, isn't it okay to lie occasionally so we can get our way and have a little fun???!! (Don't worry, Kyle has already forbidden me from saying that to them and corrupting them further.) I never knew I would be such a bad influence on my kids. :)