Honesty

I just love how kids are so brutally honest all the time. I mean, they'll lie to you in a second about cleaning their rooms or eating the candy bar that was on the counter, but they're still so honest. Like when you've been working in the garden for an hour or two in 90 degree weather, and your kid tells you that you smell bad. Or when their grandma buys them an expensive doll or something for their birthday and they tell her very bluntly that they do not like it. Or even when someone asks the kids if they want to go to come over and play, and the kids tell them no to their face.

Just today Avery exhibited this honesty. Abby told him, "You need to share." Avery responds, "I don't want to." How can you argue with that? He's quite the honest kid. Ask him, "Did you just pee in your shorts?" He'll say, "yup." "Why didn't you go potty?" "I wanted to play with my train." I'm not really sure if this honesty is necessarily a good thing or a bad thing.

It's so different from how Abby was at his age. If I asked her who broke something, or who peed in the floor, or who spilled their snack all over the room, she just lied. She would say, "Daddy did it." Never mind that he wasn't home when it happened. Sometimes she would say Avery did it, but he was just a little immobile baby at the time.

This makes me think about some famous "honest people," like Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. George said something like, "I cannot tell a lie. It was me that chopped down that apple tree." If he had been my kid, he still would have been punished for chopping down my apple tree. I've always wanted an apple tree. Just because he told the truth doesn't mean I wouldn't spank him.

Lincoln was certainly honest in some areas, but if you've ever taken a college history or black world studies class, you know that he was lacking in honesty in other areas of his life. I don't want to spread any slander (partly because I imagine Daniel would disagree), but I wouldn't recommend that anyone follow his example in religion or race politics.

So, really, even if Avery is "honest," it doesn't necessarily make him a saint. He still does naughty things, but then he tells me about it. See, the problem is he tells me afterwards, when I would prefer to know ahead of time. Can you imagine having your kid come up to you and say, "I'm about to go cut all the hair off of my sister's Barbie dolls"?? It would be weird - borderline scary.

Anyway, it turns out a table is all Abby needed to make her behave. I put a small one with a small chair in her room today, and she's been happy as can be playing on that table. Now honestly, why didn't she just tell me that's all she wanted for the past 4 years??