Pants on fire

Last night, Julia lied to me for the first time -- for the first three times, actually. These first lies, delivered one after another in the span of 10 minutes, were clumsy attempts at subterfuge and entirely transparent. Her poker face was nonetheless a little too impressive, and the whole situation left me completely unnerved as I watched my innocent preschooler morph into a defiant kid before my eyes.

What she said was "yes, I ate a potato" (when she clearly did not eat anything). What I heard was "I finished my homework already." What she said was "I need to be excused because I have to go to the bathroom right now" (after which she was unable to produce even a drop of urine -- nor to conceal her glee at escaping the dinner table). What I heard was "of course Anna's parents will be home." What she said was "Dad said it was OK" (when he clearly had not). What I heard was "yes, Mom, I promise we'll use protection." Completely horrifying. I am so not ready for this new stage, nor for any of the stages that are going to follow.

I've read all of the Parenting magazine articles and the child rearing books. I know that trying out lying is an important stage in a child's cognitive development, that she's demonstrating a mature sense of self and is doing valuable testing of her role in the world. That all sounds fabulous on paper. But in practice, my sweet, well-behaved, barely-3-year-old kid was lying. To me. Are you KIDDING me?

It can't be a coincidence that just hours before Julia's first forays into fibsville, Paul was reading Pinnochio to her for the first time. I guess she must have missed the whole moral of the story and caught only the "little boy tells lies" part. Damn those classics...