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MOD MOM: Liar, liar, the dog’s on fire
My adorable, doe-eyed daughter — the same sweat pea that greets me every morning with, “Good morning mommy! I missed you!” and every night stretches her arms wide open and says, “I love you THIS much” — has recently picked up a new, less charming habit.
Lying.
It started innocently enough, telling her daddy his parents had stopped by for a visit or that her and mommy went to the playground, when neither were true. But since those are regular occurrences, we thought maybe she was just confusing her days.
Over the next several weeks, her tales grew taller.
One day she told daddy all about the fishing trip we took, and the big fish she caught. A few days later she proudly told him she had gone on the potty, and was receiving accolades when I had to break the news that she was fibbing. And then she argued with me! “Ava, tell the truth, you didn’t go on the potty.’ “YES I DID GO ON POTTY!” Err. The teen years flashed before me.
When she got busted jumping on the couch, she assured me it wasn’t her, it was her friend Katelyn. Of course, Katelyn wasn’t even at the house.
Apparently that’s a common toddler fib. My friend’s 2-year-old frequently blames her older brother for pushing her down, despite the fact that he’s at school.
And I can’t tell you the times poor Barney, Mickey and the family pet get the blame in toddler homes everywhere.
When my friend’s 20-month-old son had obviously soiled his diaper, prompting his dad to ask, “Did you poop?” he replied with feeling, “Oh NO daddy not me! Barney poop in my diaper.”
Those self-serving fibs are among the earliest our children tell, usually to avoid something — like the dreaded diaper change — or to gain something, maybe that extra cookie.
Child psychologists say these types of fibs are perfectly normal and innocent at this age. Out little ones aren’t intentionally trying to trick us, they just can’t quite distinguish between fantasy and reality. Instead, the lies are usually based on active imaginations — don’t all children have dinosaurs living in their back yards? Or simple forgetfulness — he really doesn’t remember dumping juice in the car seat.
It’s around age 3 to 4 that most children begin to understand a purposeful lie — and they can tell some whoppers — but according to child psychologists that doesn’t mean they’re becoming pathological.
Those pre-school years are the times of imaginary friends, wishful thinking, learning to tell the difference between fiction and reality and just plain thinking it’s funny to fool mommy and daddy.
My friend’s 4-year-old daughter, refusing to go to sleep one recent night, explained that she couldn’t go to sleep because she had to write an essay.
Another friend recalled calling the fire department when she was 5, telling the horrified operators that her house and her arm were on fire. She then explained that Teddy Ruxpin made her do it because they were bored.
One of the funniest stories I heard was on “The Today Show” a few months ago, when a mom shared the story her 4-year-old told her as she was trying on lingerie in a department store. “Daddy puts on your bras sometimes,” her daughter said innocently. She went on in detail to explain that when mommy was asleep on Saturday mornings, daddy would put on the bra over his T-shirt and then jump on the trampoline.
Instead of making an appointment with a child psychiatrist if your toddler is becoming an adept liar, consider this: Research shows that preschoolers with higher IQs are more likely to lie and early lying may be the predecessor to good social skills.
So the next time your little one tells you his teddy bear peed on the floor, just start calculating that college scholarship money.
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BAYLOR: Dear Pat
“I can’t help but wonder if we’ve made a mistake in settling down in New Albany. This place is nuts.”
The words quoted above are real. I didn’t make them up. They were spoken to me by a friend who wasn’t raised here, like you and I were, you in the city, and me in the county.
Perhaps neither of us is able to see the counter-productive political dysfunction holding sway hereabouts quite as clearly as someone who views our home turf with clear, unprejudiced eyes — the type of person far too many natives persist in dismissing and deriding as an “outsider.”
Pat, we don’t know each other that well, and during the time since you were elected to represent the 4th council district, we’ve had a few heated debates over politics, policy and public affairs. Let’s forget those. The reason why I’m writing you today is because of my friend, who came here from somewhere else because he and his wife believe in our city’s largely untapped potential. In spite of our differences, Pat, it’s always been my view that at some level, you genuinely “get it.”
As such, what are we to tell my friend — tell him, and her, and “them people,” as your caterwauling council colleague Dan Coffey has oft times referred to anyone who is educated, artistic, productive and capable? Are we to follow Coffey’s lead and turn away the new blood — the sort of people that any community needs to build, grow and prosper — or shall we harness, integrate and welcome them to a city that values their presence and benefits from their labors?
I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right, Pat. It isn’t about newcomers alone. It’s about those who already live here — most importantly, about their children. It’s a cliché, but children are the city’s hope and its future. In the past, our best and brightest tended to leave town, because we couldn’t offer the sort of economic, cultural and lifestyle opportunities they regarded as necessary to stay. This needs to change, and in some respects, it has.
Surely we can agree: When it comes to education and educational opportunities, that selfishness, resentment and spite have no conceivable place in the discussion.
And yet, Pat, since you’ve served on the city council, can unbiased, neutral observers reach any other conclusion than this one:
New Albany’s city council, as permitted by its members to be dominated by a regressive, anti-intellectual faction led by Dan Coffey and abetted by Steve Price, has consistently stood against education, and educational attainment, and sustainable economic development flowing as a natural consequence of education?
I’m trying earnestly not to exaggerate the Coffey-led council’s anti-educational bias, which in practice might better be referred to as an aversion to human progress in virtually any quantifiable form, except you and I both know the malignancy is there, and profoundly damaging.
My question to you, Pat: If you know better, and I think you do, then why, at this late juncture, is your name so closely linked politically with theirs?
Consider last week’s tragicomic school closings. If ever there were a time for this pointlessly fractured, hopelessly divided council (and that’s just the eight strong Democratic contingent) to come together, call a special town hall meeting, posture, grandstand, point fingers and squawk, this was it: Neighborhood schools being closed in three downtown council districts, hampering if not outright crippling revitalization prospects and economic development for decades to come.
Predictably, none of it occurred. As a body, the council was silent, and the only way to explain its timidity is outright malice on the part of its movers and shakers. City Hall came out forcefully against the school closings, and almost certainly, that’s why the Coffey-Price “let’s pretend to be Democrats and hope that we all fail” faction refrained from comment.
That they fail as individuals to see any value in progress merely seals the deal on their crass political absenteeism. Either way, it’s another black eye for a city already ill disposed toward insight.
Understood: Times are hard. The business climate is tough, and yet quite a few people, many of them from elsewhere, have invested in downtown New Albany. To cite one example, the new State Street branch of Wick’s Pizza has been its best performing store in metro Louisville. Wick’s is situated in Coffey’s council district, and yet he hasn’t missed an opportunity to speak and act against such development, to bad-mouth entrepreneurs, and to urge future investors to stay away from New Albany.
Pat, is this really leadership?
(No, Roger, it isn’t.)
I know you believe that. I know you’re better than that. I know you have what it takes to lead. But Pat, here’s what bothers me.
Why do you tolerate it, and why do you persist in voting with Coffey and Price?
Sorry, no; you can’t explain it by saying that the issues upon which you’ve been marching lockstep with the council’s ward heeling looters — sewer rate votes, audit envy, public safety and dollar-and-cents issues —are somehow different in nature from the spiteful, repugnant, self-debilitating attitude toward the city’s future displayed by these same congenital “no” voters. The non-governing principles prefacing book burning and tea parties are exactly the same.
Pat, it’s eloquently simple even though it’s excruciatingly hard.
When the time finally comes for last call — not a quick pint before the trip home from the warm pub on a cold, desperate and anonymous night just like all the rest, but the punching of the big ticket and the cosmic bow prior to that most irrevocable of all curtains falling, how will posterity judge your political legacy?
Was it progressive or regressive?
Was it Dan Coffey’s legacy … or yours? -
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