The Claw
This lie we tell to Bang started small, kind of like a snowflake. However, it has grown into a fairly large and complicated tale much like a snowball turns into snowman’s head. You see, many months ago Bang notice a missing tile in the ceiling at Walmart. He asked why. Now, 99% of the time, I give him the truth.This, however, was the 1%. Bang was going through this whining phase (he hasn’t quite passed all the way the through it yet) so when he asked why there was a hole I told him, “That’s where the claw comes down to pick up kids who whine.” It worked. He stopped whining. In the grocery store he asked if there was a claw. Of course, because if it works in Walmart it will work in the grocery store, too. The air ducts are the tubes the whiny kids go through. “Then where do they go?” he asked. They get dropped into the dumpster that’s out back. “Then what?” Then the garbage truck comes to pick them up. This happen at every store. They all have claws.
One day he asked to go see the dumpster behind the grocery store to see where the whiny kids go. So we took him. Lo and behold there was the dumpster. We laughed when we noticed that the dumpster had a tube connecting it to the building. Perfect. He now can see that after you go through the tubes inside the store, you then go through the tube outside and get deposited right into the dumpster. *This dumpster is actually for compost from the produce department*
Then, as our lie continued to manifest, the claws developed cameras and microphones. Bang’s first question in a store is asking where the claw comes out. Quickly, we find a spot on the ceiling, usually air vents, and point it out to him. Then he wants to know where the cameras are. Usually, this one’s easy, we just look for the little black objects on the ceiling that typically house security cameras. After that, he’ll want to know where the microphone is. Sometime it’s emergency sprinkler heads and sometimes it’s a speaker mounted into the ceiling.
Just last night this lie progressed a bit further. Bang asked where the garbage truck takes the whiny kids. “Erie, Indiana,” I told him. Where they have to sleep in Tupperware containers. DW added that they have to go to “bad kid school” where they teach the whiny kids to be good.
As you can see, this lie started small, just a claw to get him to stop whining. It has snowballed. One day he will realize that there is no claw. Hopefully he will laugh at the complexity we have created. Who knows, maybe the claw will be passed on to our grand kids.
We have all told little white lies to our kids for one reason or another. Has one of your little white lies turned into an elaborate hoax as our “claw”?
This is the thing that picks kids up by their head, takes them through the air ducts and drops them in the dumpster out back.
Love this. lol I can imagine him one day cocking his head to the side and going, “Heyyyy…waitaminute.” XD
Off the top of my head I can’t think of any big lies we’ve told missy to get her to behave. Other than, I guess, the threat of throwing her toys in the garbage. lol Like hell I’d do that with the amount of money they cost!
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LOL I threw a 5 gallon bucket of Legos away one day. Imagine that cost! The garbage bag that was in the garbage can had just been changed so it was empty (until the Legos landed in there). I just took the bag out tied it up and took it to the garbage can outside pretending to toss it out. Later, when they weren’t looking, I went and retrieved it and hid it for a week.
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lmao For a minute I thought you’d ACTUALLY thrown them out! I was going to beat the hell out of you! Ha ha ha ha
I “threw out” a huge bag of crayons one day by hiding them under the bathroom sink. Forgot about them for about eight months. lol
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LOL!
I told Little Man that every time he asks “How much longer” or “Are we there yet” that an extra five minutes gets tacked on to our drive. It hasn’t worked that well.
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That didn’t work so well for us either on our drive to the States. With very little (or none at all in Bang’s case) concept of time 15 minutes and 15 hours is the nearly the same thing.
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Lawd have mercy. The longest drive we’ve been on since he has been verbal was about 6 hours. And that was hellish.
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Nice. Our trip to the states was 3,100 miles! 😀
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I love it! And seeing as my Little Mouse hasn’t passed all the way through the whining stage either, I may just have to use this one.
As for lies I’ve told my kids…well there are many! However the best one is how I told them that when THEY lie, there is a mark on their forehead, that only mommies and daddies can see. So anytime they lied, they would cover their forehead. While I hold back the laughter, and tell them that I know they are lying, my older one gets mad and tries to scrub it off! My little one checks the mirror to try to see the mark!
I think I’ll keep that one for a while! 😉
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I’m laughing pretty hard, right now. Literally, lol. I can picture them covering their foreheads trying to cover up their lying mark. That sure does take the guess work out for you! I’ll swap you a claw for a lie mark 😀
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It’s a deal! I read it somewhere while on maternity leave and decided to try it and it worked, so I stuck with it. It is pretty awesome to see my older one turn her head away when she tells me something, so I know automatically that she’s lying. It’s perfection, so I share it with everyone. As parents, have to stick together! Raising kids can be a battlefield at times!
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Oh my!! Can’t believe I miss this post. What a great story of whiney kids being sucked by the dumpster! My recent one is telling my kids that if they continue biting their nails/suckling their thumbs, their fingers will fall off. They got upset.but soon realised, fngers still there.Buting/ducking continue. My claw is flawed.
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There’s stuff you can buy to put on their fingernails that tastes pretty nasty to help them stop biting. It’s like a clear nail polish (in the same section) but has an awful taste. Or, what we do, since Bang HATES peas we have “pea juice” (green water in a plastic water bottle) and whenever he bites his nails we either dip his fingers in it or threaten to. 🙂
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*biting/sucking
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