Penina Winisdatter

Best lie I’ve ever told kids? Easy… and I still use it for noisy ones.

Some kids in our old apartment complex were yelling and screaming, playing chase, whatever… I came downstairs and said “So, you kids don’t really care about using up your screams, do you?”

“What?” they asked. curious. So I sat down and told them “Well, in your life time, you *only* get a few hundred screams. If you use them all up as a child, you’ll never ever be able to scream again… not even if a monster was chasing you!”

To their incredulous comments, I said “I learned the hard way… listen!” and opened my mouth, and pantomimed a loud scream. Really threw my heart into it. Not a single sound came out! Their eyes went huge and they all looked rather scared.

“It’s OK, you can scream when you need to… but don’t use them all up.” I cautioned.

Ahhhh blissful peace!

Geneva Storme

When my daughter was small, we were going through a rough patch financially, and couldn’t afford to get her a bunch of expensive things for Christmas. We didn’t want her asking for a bunch of high end stuff she’d seen on tv and being disappointed not to get it all, so we told her that we could only afford less expensive presents, but that she could ask Santa for just one BIG present each year. That way she could decide which big-ticket item she wanted most and otherwise be satisfied with lesser offerings.

Fast forward a few years when, inevitably, she found out that Santa was not real. She was CRUSHED. Absolutely devastated, crying inconsolably. When we could get a coherent answer out of her, she told us ‘I thought I was saving you money by asking Santa for the big presents, and you were paying for them the whole time!’ Poor kid’s heart was in the right place, at least.

Elizabeth Muller

My first child believes that our having a second child was her idea.

Soon after I found out that I was pregnant with our second, I bought a bunch of books for our 3 year old about what it means to be a big sister. We read the books for a few days, and then she told me that she had decided that she wanted to have a baby sister. I told her that if we were going to have another baby, we wouldn’t be able to decide if we wanted a girl or a boy. I also explained that it would sometimes mean that I would have to take care of the baby, and might not always be able to play with her. We talked about it for a while, about her having a sibling to play with, to teach things to, but that it would also be a lot of work for all of us. Babies cry a lot, I said. She decided that all of that was ok – and she really wanted a baby sister or a baby brother. I told her I would see what I could do.

A few days later I told her I was pregnant. She was thrilled, and has always felt that the baby was “her” baby. She continues to take wonderful care of him (she is now 6, he is 3). Here she is, meeting “her” baby for the first time when he was just a few hours old.

via Quora