Lies Our Parents Tell Us..!

No, I don’t mean the ‘your dad is really your uncle’ kind of lies or the ‘you’re adopted’ type either.  I mean those usually innocent, white lies.  Little lies that get us to do things, or think things because as children we believe anything our parents tell us.

For example, that if you are good for a whole year, in December a big fat man in a red suit will sneak into your bedroom at midnight and shower you in gifts. Or the less cool, but still abstract rabbit that delivers us eggs made out of chocolate at Easter time.

My own family added a few of their own lies over the years.  And I worked out over the last few months that these so called ‘facts my parents told me were not true.   Let’s take fact number one.  “Your dad built these toilets.”  As a child, I used to fear public toilets; in fact I still do now a little bit. I find them eerie and dirty looking. So the lie about my dad building toilets across my town was constructed to deal with this problem.  My dad is a joiner and I knew he worked on building sites and obviously fell for these lies.  I only realised that it wasn’t true a few months ago when thinking back to my childhood!

Lie Number too.  “It’s Illegal to not recycle.”  Now I have to be honest, my dad told me this about three years ago when I moved into my own house.  There was all different bins and boxes for paper and for recycling cans and glass as well as a bin for your none recyclable rubbish.  So after forgetting for about the tenth time, I said “oh, I might just not bother!  It’s too much hassle!” My dad told me that you could get arrested for not recycling your rubbish.  Thanks Dad, because when I reiterated this comment to my former housemates, they laughed at me for ages!  I now can recycle very well, just incase you wondered!

Last but not least, I found out today that something my Mother told me about Peach Melba yoghurt is actually true.  When she told me the ‘melba’ bit was from the added raspberry, as a child I did believe her.  My brother and I used to fight like cat and dog for the raspberry yoghurts in a pack, as they were our favorites.  Recently, I thought back to this and presumed she was lying to make us eat the peach yoghurts, but in actual fact, after googling the yoghurts ingredients, I found out that it really is peach and raspberry!

What lies have your parents told you over the years to get you behave yourselves?  Do you tell your children that if they don’t eat all their food that a monster will get them?  Feel free to comment with your own stories!

Carly.  Xx (Who at 21 still believes eating crusts will make her hair curly.)

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