LIES ALL LIES!!!

So I'm trying to start this out facetiously, but in all honesty I'm just about as heartbroken as I was when I wrote this post. Today is the first day of the third week of school (yes, already) and today was the second time in that time frame that my big boy, my wonderful, amazing, super kid, has been caught in a lie. Pause, pause, pause...waiting for all of our family to pick themselves up off of the floor from the shock.

I KNOW! I couldn't believe it either! But, alas, its true. He's a liar. Too facetious?

Last week it was an incident in school. He told me his version and I did my best to believe it, but something told me to write a little note to the teacher, just to clarify that my child is wonderful and amazing and brilliant and that the other one mentioned in his little tale was a complete delinquent. Au contraire. Her little note back: "You might want to have Nathan tell you the story again :)" (Smiley face hers, not mine). My heart literally sank. I went through the stages of grief very quickly...

What? No way! Not My child. That teacher's crazy!

Why that little *&#$! He'll rue the day!

Maybe if I just write a little cute note back we can pretend the whole thing never happened...

I don't care if he turns out to be a criminal or politician. I don't want to deal with this.

Alright, it stinks to be the parent, but I've got to punish him. Here we go...

So I talked and talked and talked about telling the truth. I told him how disappointed and hurt I was that he had lied. I had him write down a sentence about telling the truth...Don't really know where I was going with that one, but I was cooking dinner at the time and I wanted to make sure he was listening even though I couldn't completely focus on him...(I wonder if he knows that I am totally making this up as I go along? Where is that parenting handbook? Oh, wait I should have read that by now...Anyone have the Cliff's Notes?)

I then moved on to the punishment. At this point I reverted back to the anger stage of grief and began mentally taking away everything he's ever been given. I quickly realized that was not the answer. Looking back, my punishment was a bit weak, but I did tell him the consequences of any future untruths. That was the BIG punishment. The one I would never have to actually follow through with because he would never think that any lie was worth giving up that. Au contraire, encore.

Today the second untruth was discovered. This was not a huge lie. We're not talking Watergate here. It was something I would even call a "fib" which is really just a cutesy way of saying LIES ALL LIES! But I had to talk to him about it and I had to ask him what I had said I would do if he told another lie. He remembered. He knew he did not tell the truth. So as much as I hated to, I had to follow through. And he's mad at me tonight. He didn't say that, but I can tell. He didn't even act mad or at all ill-behaved so that I felt justified in handing out this punishment. Instead I felt like a big ole meany who sucks. Ugh. And wouldn't you know, I'm the only one home this week. I'm the one who will enforce this yucky new punishment. In all fairness, Daddy would have done the same, but its just part of the suckiness of being the primary caregiver. (On the bright side, it gets me out of jury duty...oh wait, I guess living in Belgium takes care of that now...darn, where's the bright side now?)

So, here I sit with this yucky feeling in my stomach. Thinking about my sweet, wonderful, amazing boy and how much I love him--there's that bright side! So much, in fact, that I am willing to be despised and unpopular for the moment. And you know what? Life is so not a sitcom...there was no sappy music playing...no head tilt to the side from junior as he said, "You know Mom, you are right. I have learned my lesson and I will never burden you with the worry that I might be telling untruths again! Thanks for being so groovy!" And it was definitely not followed up with a clip from next week's episode ensuring that the problem is completely unrelated to the last two weeks. I feel so misled.