Lie to Me

In the throws of colic and infantdom, Molly was the difficult baby.  Once crawling became walking and walking became running our new hurdle was managing a mischievous Jack, who spent every waking moment bent on self-destruction.  The tables have turned again, as I was told happens all the time with twins, and Molly, Queen of Drama reigns once again.

I have been told that the above photo makes Queen Molly (age 14 months) look "Evil" and "Sinister"

On Saturday the minions were playing at my parents house while I completed our taxes online.  When it was time to go home Chris helped the kids tidy up the wreckage from the toy bomb they'd detonated all over my parent's house.  When my mom and I commended the minions on what a good job they had done tidying up, Molly informed Nana that she had cleaned up because "Daddy hit her".  My mom tried to explain to Molly that she was mistaken and that it wasn't nice to say someone hit you when they didn't. Tangent: My family has this weird rule where you don't call people out on being liars, even though Molly was obviously lying.  It's not uncommon to hear me or one of my siblings call someone a pathological mistaker because my mother taught us that calling someone a liar, even when they were clearly and deliberately being untruthful, is just bad manners.

On Tuesday morning Molly decided she didn't want any part of getting dressed to go to daycare.  She pulled off her pants, writhed on the floor, screamed, cried, kicked and did everything in her power to ensure we were late for work.  Since Chris and I generally find it works best not to acknowledge negative behaviour until after Molly has tapped out on her tantrum, we got Jack and ourselves ready and stepped over her while she spun like the Tasmanian Devil.  She had finally stopped crying, and had her pants back on, when we strapped her into her car seat.  She told Chris that I had hurt her arm: another blatant "mistake".  Apparently I needed to kiss it better.  She later explained that it still hurt from two weeks ago when I had accidentally shut her jacket in the car door when she was waving her hand around.  My head nearly exploded.

On Wednesday night when Jack was sitting in Chris' lap playing, Molly decided that she wanted to be the only one curled up with dad.  She climbed up and began to kick Jack off using her feet.  Jack shoved her back, gently, maintaining his spot. We didn't step in because we are trying to encourage referee free conflict resolution.  Molly marched over to me and told me that Jack had hurt her legs.  "He hurt me, Jack hurt me." she repeated.  I corrected her, "You mean you hurt your legs when you were kicking Jack?  Maybe you shouldn't kick your brother." I corrected her as calmly as I could.

Later that night Molly freaked out because Jack stole her Dora the Explorer fruit snacks.  This time she wasn't lying, so I tried to make it a teachable moment about credibility.  I'm not entirely sure if my message resonated.

A while back a friend sent me an article about a study showing how toddlers lie. The study focused on two and three year olds and even the researchers were surprised to discover that 25 percent of two years olds would lie to them. Apparently by seven years of age nearly 100% of children will lie to cover up mistakes or transgressions.  The silver lining is that this means that Miss Molly is more cognitively advanced than her peers, although we're not exactly toasting this latest development.

I am searching for a copy of The Boy Who Cried Wolf  because Mensa still hasn't returned our calls about entering our pathological mistaker into their scholarship program so she can pursue her career as a criminal mastermind.

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