Are you smarter then a 4 year old?

So the other day we had a situation in our house where one of my two older children brought in a leaf from outside, broke it up into a hundred pieces and then left it on the coffee table.

Our first instinct led us to ask Miles if he did it because first of all he's a boy and second of all his typical response when he's caught doing something wrong to questions like "Why did you do that?" or "What were you thinking?" is "I don't know." while grabbing his lip or squirming around (terrible poker player). But when we asked him, he didn't do his guilty dance and just said it wasn't him. We then pulled in our sweet daughter Lily who never lies or never does anything like this and asked her the same question. She also denied the allegations.

Game on.

We stood them side by side and said that somebody better come clean and tell the truth. Miles getting the brunt of the pressure but we couldn't break him. We started to sense some unease from Lily and focused on her for a minute or two until she came clean and admitted to doing it. We immediately asked her, "What were your thinking?" and she replied, "I don't know." - not an acceptable answer.

I took her up to her room and tied all of this event to the story about the boy who cries wolf. She loves that story and is always fascinated by the boys' daring actions to lie but also curious what happened when the wolf did come and no one was there to rescue him. I told her that next time she tells me something, I might not believe her because she had lied and not been honest and trustworthy. This was the worst punishment she could have received and was very emotional about the thought of this.

"Check" - Daddy

I'm sure you are thinking "What's the point David, get on with it already!" Ok, so get this...

The next day (no joke), I was saying goodbye to everyone before I headed off to work and said that I would be home early since I had been working a couple of late nights recently. And off I went. When I got to work, low and behold I had my days mixed up and needed to go out to dinner with some collegues in from out of town. I called my wife, let her know, she was good with it and I thought that was that.

When I got home, right around the kids bed time, Lily was loaded for bear. She very matter of factly started telling me about how we don't lie to each other because then there is no way to believe what the other person is saying. I confusingly agreed with her because it almost felt like she was giving me the business but I hadn't lied to her.

Contraire Mon Frair - She told me that I shouldn't make promises I can't keep because really that is no different then lying. Looking at it that way, in all reality I did say that I would be home early, and with good reason or not, I didn't come home early so to her, I did lie and she called me out.

"Check" - Daughter

I looked at my 4 1/2 year old daughter in complete awe and amazement because she didn't just put 2 and 2 together, she applied reasoning and context to the concept of lying and the ramifications of not being honest and trustworthy. I got down at eye level with her and said that she is absolutly right - I shouldn't make promises I can't keep and if I'm not 100% sure what I'm saying is true, I should be honest and say I don't know.

Then the real beauty in all of this was that was all she needed to hear, all was forgiven and forgotten and never spoken of again.

"Checkmate" - BITE life.