Sep 10

Sep 10 i flat out lied to my kids again

I flat out lied to my kids again today.

They'd been with their dad all last week. When I picked them up from school this afternoon the first thing they said was how excited they were to get home and see the chickens.

Oh fuck, I thought. I haven't told them yet that four of the little fuzz babies drowned.

So I told them.

"Oh I have to tell you something - there are only two now."

"What happened?"

"I'm not sure, I think they must have gotten out in the night and run away."

James shot a quizzical sideways glance in my direction.

I just couldn't bring myself to tell them the truth.

Incredibly, later when we got home and the boys were cuddling one chicken each, Indi asked if chickens ever drown. I stumbled in my web of lies for a moment, before saying that yes it happens, but that it won't happen to us because I've got a very shallow water bowl for them that I refill every day.

One lie turns into a river of lies, or a blue plastic ice-cream bucket full as it were.

Would it have been better to give it to them straight - tell them that I found all four of them drowned in the drinking water? Some stiff and some still tepid and floppy? That they were buried in the compost pile?

Indi cried last time we gave some chooks away for goodness sake. I just couldn't bear hitting him with the truth.

The dilemmas of parenting. Maybe I should've just been straight up with them. But I wasn't, and if I backpedal now it will be so much worse than if I'd just come clean from the beginning.

As it turns out, one yellow chick with a black spot on its head, and one black chick with a yellow spot on its bottom, are the two stayers - and so the boys (cleverly) have named them Yin and Yang.

So maybe this is just another example of yin and yang in motion: light - dark, life - death, truth - lies.

Good mum / bad mum? Pondering.