I’m having one of *those* weeks. Those weeks when I feel like the rug has been pulled out from under me parenting-wise. Those weeks when God, or karma, or Dr. Ferber or whoever sits above you and watches you try to parent and act like you know what-the-hell you’re doing … and points and laughs the whole time. Hopefully everyone has days {or weeks, or months} like those – because I sure as hell do. I’m having two major issues with parenting my heathen children this week. But because I don’t want to overwhelm you with my *steller* parenting, let’s just talk about one of them, shall we?
The Mouse told his first lie this week. I’m pausing here to let that sink in. He outright LIED to me. My four year old. LIED TO ME.
Every day, I get a progress report from his teacher with either a green, yellow or red sticker on it … which lets me know how he did behaviorally that day. If they mess up during the day, their name moves from green to yellow – but if they’re good for the rest of the day, they can get it to move back up to green. In the past two weeks the Mouse has come home with a handful of yellow stickers. We’ve had conversations about listening, following directions etc – he knows that it’s not okay to come home on yellow.
So yesterday when I picked him up the first thing he said was, ‘MOM – I got green today!!’ YAY Mouse, I’m so proud of you {bighug bighug praise praise high five}. Then we get in the car, and out of the blue he says:
‘Mom, I wasn’t talking too loud in the cafeteria. I wasn’t!’
Oh really Mouse, did your teacher say you were talking too loudly? Does that mean you came home with yellow today?
‘NO mom, I came home with green, I told you!’
{pause}
‘Except, don’t look in my backpack. EVER. Never ever go in my backpack again, okay?’
So, I don’t know about you guys, but this {to me} kinda sent up some red flags. I mean, maybe it’s just me … but whenever someone tells me NOT to do something, I obviously immediately want to do it. So damned if I didn’t pull the car over right then and there and check his back pack.
‘NO MOM! I TOLD YOU NOT TO LOOK IN MY BACKPACK! IT’S GREEN, I TOLD YOU IT WAS GREEN!!!’
So, who here would be surprised if I told you the Mouse came home with yellow, instead of green that day? Anyone? Bueller?
I didn’t think so.
So this raises several concerns for me. Obviously, first and foremost – ohmaigod my baby just seriously LIED to me? I thought I still had a couple of years before crap like this started being a real issue in our household. I can remember being a liar as a kid – it drove my parents absolutely crazy – and they were seriously tough about offenses in our family. But he’s FOUR. What the hell am I supposed to do with a four-year-old who’s lying to me?
Secondly – my kid is so stressed out about achieving a stupid green sticker that he’s LYING at FOUR YEARS OLD. This just by itself is kind of worrisome. I get that this is still the first month of ‘real’ school. He’s four – and obviously still getting to used to serious curriculum, and sitting criss-cross applesauce for long periods of time, standing in line etc. Throw all that in with learning how to draw the letter ‘G’ and also having to maintain an inside voice in a cafeteria going wild with fourth graders … it’s no wonder he’s overwhelmed.
We got home, and we had a long conversation with Daddy about the whole thing. There’s no give on the lying thing … neither one of us were happy about that at all … but the Mouse knows now that a yellow sticker {while not cool to bring home} is not the end of the world. We’ve also started a reward chart for him. He knows that if he brings home 10 green stickers in a row he gets to go to Target to pick out a new Iron Man toy. Bribery? Yes, maybe. But I would rather reward him for good behavior then berate him so much for the not-so-good stuff that he feels like he has to lie to us about a damn sticker.
Tell me I’m not the only mom-to-a-four-year-old who has dealt with a good clean fib? I was so blown away by this!
We’ve had issues with lying here before. (Easter when she was 2, almost 3, we caught her eating candy and she flat out lied to us and told us she wasn’t.) We’ve had enough conversations about not lying, that I have to be careful about how I joke with her. To a 3-4 year old, saying “Caroline doesn’t like ice cream.” sounds a lot like a lie and not so much like a joke.
We’ve dealt with this, too. My youngest has been the worst. She is now 5, but when she was 3 & 4, she would lie to me. She once told be with a completely straight face that one of her sisters had broken something when it was actually little E herself that had done it. I was shocked, too, but we just talked with her about being honest. We told her that, in that case for example, now she had 2 punishments – one for breaking the item and one for the lying (which was more severe than the other one) and pointed out that if she had been honest to begin with, there would only have been 1 simple punishment. After having that same conversation a few times, it seems to have finally gotten through. Yesterday, she admitted to me that she had to move her monkey off the tree at school that day (similar to the stoplight system). She obviously got to move back up at some point because she came home with a sticker (which means her monkey was still in the tree.) If she hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have known. I praised her for her bravery and honesty and didnot give her any punishment for having to move her monkey.
I’ve been dealing with this with my daughter and she’s four as well. Most of the time its a story about something that happened (that didn’t really happen), but she has also lied about stuff she’s done because she doesn’t want to get in trouble.
I take it pretty seriously, and I’m not happy about it. I also remember lying as a kid, and I know that most kids do it, but I want to make sure she understands that it is not acceptable.
You’re not the only mom to a four year old who has dealt with fibs. Most of ours revolve around whether or not something happened to his little brother, but no, you’re not the only one.
It sucks. :/
Ugh I am SO not ready for this. My son is 17 months right now and we are just entering in the tantrums and everything being “no”. I think you and your Husband handled it really well, and I love the reward system idea.
dude. hes not stressed out about getting a green sticker (although he knows its way cool to make you happy when he does) – hes just 4. they lie. Trust me on this one.
that said- we talk frequently about how important it is to not lie. and how important trust is and you lose it when you lie. Do they get it? not always. And they still tell fibs. The punishment for lying is FAR worse than for whatever they were lying about. We also talk about how they would feel if we lied to them. Like what if we told you were were going to McDonalds for dinner, then said never mind! I lied! we are having brussels spouts and onions! you know, stuff that they can get and will understand how their feelings would be hurt if they were in the same spot.
bottom line- totally normal behavior and it WILL get better.
Yes, 4 years old is the debil. BUT – when we initially had the conversation in the car and talked about the stupid yellow sticker the first thing he did was break down SOBBING and say, ‘But getting green is so hard, every day!’ … He also talks about how long his day is and how tired he is on a regular basis; so I know he’s stressed. He spent 4 months prior to school be coddled by his great grandmothers and having ZERO structure … and then was thrown into this.
He’ll adjust, he’ll be fine – but yeah, he is stressed about this whole new schedule and the expectations that go along with it.
That being said, he is four and lying to get out of trouble was bound to happen at some point, lol.
@MeganF
Yes, 4 years old is the debil. BUT – when we initially had the conversation in the car and talked about the stupid yellow sticker the first thing he did was break down SOBBING and say, ‘But getting green is so hard, every day!’ … He also talks about how long his day is and how tired he is on a regular basis; so I know he’s stressed. He spent 4 months prior to school be coddled by his great grandmothers and having ZERO structure … and then was thrown into this.
He’ll adjust, he’ll be fine – but yeah, he is stressed about this whole new schedule and the expectations that go along with it.
That being said, he is four and lying to get out of trouble was bound to happen at some point, lol.
@Tottums but is he saying these things because he has over heard you and the hubby and whoever saying them? I know my boys often use things that they have heard me say to others, so they can get out of things/out of trouble/etc/etc…. just something to think about
@MeganF @Tottums Her point was, Megan, that he’s worried that he’ll be in trouble over a green sticker so he’s telling her he got one so he doesn’t get in trouble when she sees the yellow sticker. It IS stressing him out. I had colored cards in elementary school and I definitely got stressed from it because the teachers go by every little tidbit you do. If you raise your voice, your color changes. If you “back talked” the teacher by telling them over and over again you just don’t understand something, your color changes. I was more worried about my colors changing than I was getting good grades. Again, this is a four year old little boy. The color system is completely ridiculous. It’s clear he’s not just mimicking his parents, because I’m sure that they don’t go around saying “I got a green sticker, not a yellow one” to get out of something…
I wish you luck with your little guy. The sticker system IS stressful on kids because they think that if their color isn’t green that they’re in trouble. That does put a lot of stress on a child. They try so hard to not make any mistakes, when parents teach them that mistakes are perfectly fine to make every so often because each mistake teaches them a lesson. The only lesson they learn with the color system is that if they get too excited over something cool and make a commotion, they’ll be in trouble because they got a ‘bad’ color.
@Kaitlyn Whealy @MeganF This is it in a nutshell, Kaitlyn. If you take a look at my follow up post from last week, we’ve taken off a lot of the emphasis on the color {at home anyway} and he’s done MUCH better with everything. We’re on our 6th day of ‘green’ now!
We had Aide lie to sue for the first iem recently as well and I think it ahs more to do with the fact that he i snow with someolder kids. Iw ish our school did a sticker system like that because its hard to gauge just how well he did when he starts in one room for the say day, moves over to his room when his teacher gets there and when she leaves he moves over to another room to consolidate the kids at the end of the day. For the most part he has decent days, but the days that he doesn’t do so well we take away his evening tv show or his cars or soemthign else. He gets mad and we tell him that he can get them back when he has a good day at school. BUt he is still learning the ropes as well and next year will be a whol enew ball game with Kindergarten.
Sigh… yes, our four-year-old has lied to us, too. Our older daughter might outright defy us, but she doesn’t lie to us. (She owns up to her mistakes. “BOOM — I did this!” Her problems are bold and blatant.) Our four-year-old, though, is more apt to do subtle things wrong and attempt to cover them up. It’s amazing how kids can have different tendencies of misbehavior.
It keeps parents on their toes, for certain!
Yup, been there. Lucy knows now that if she lies, she is in trouble, if she tells us the truth then she isn’t in trouble. It’s been a hard road. We also do a rewards thing too. It seems to be working for us!