A Little Liar?

Lately Zachary has been experimenting with the truth. Mostly it is very silly, and followed by "I'm just kidding." Sometimes he takes it a little further, and tries to convince me by saying, "I'm SERIOUS! No, I am! I'm serious!" He must say this a lot, because now Juliette walks around the house saying, "I kidding!" and "I see-ous!" He's into opening the front door and ringing the doorbell and then saying, "Grandma's here!" The other day I was shocked when Tyler, our beloved neighbor, actually did appear after Zachary said, "Tyler will be here in five minutes!" I'm so used to being told that Tyler is here or Tyler is coming that this time I dismissed it as well.

I spoke to his teacher, the wise Miss Sarah (love her!) today about this, asking if lying was typical at this age. She reported that it is, but she still recommended nipping it in the bud. (She said some parents actually find the lying amusing! Seriously?!) She suggested that when he tells a tale, he needs to start it by saying, "This is a made-up story." The last thing we want to do is kill off Zachary's imagination, which is extensive. This way, he can still tell the story, but starts to understand the difference between lies and the truth, make believe and reality. I haven't tried this yet, but will give it a go!

So then the second part of this story is last night when Jason was taking out the trash, he counted about twenty candy wrappers in Zachary's trash can!! (First of all, so sly, and yet, so not sly!) He's been closing the pocket door of the kitchen lately while I'm in there cooking and closing his own bedroom door. Now I know why. So we are in the midst of this little crisis. Jason and I weren't really sure what to do for a "consequence" (not a punishment, as Miss Sarah pointed out), and we really feel that the punishment should fit the crime. But then he did suffer some immediate consequences when he couldn't fall asleep and then woke up crying in the middle of the night because his body was hurting. Well, YEAH! So we are going to lay off the sweets for a bit, and we are trying to stress that we aren't so much upset about the candy eating, but more about the sneakiness. Hopefully he has also learned that we ration the candy on purpose. His little sensitive body can only handle so much. Fortunately he hasn't figured out yet that his father and I have been doing the same thing every night! Oh Halloween candy!! I curse you!