Liar, liar

I'm not a fan of lying to my kids at all, even when it comes to getting them to eat something.

Beef is beef. Chicken is chicken. And fish is chicken of the sea.

Alright, so I might be a little more willing to play with semantics when it comes to food, but not so much that it'll come up in their therapy session.

"She told me it was chicken and it was really pork. Give me some Xanax."

However, my husband is like freakin' Honest Abe with this whole "lying by omission is still lying."

"Here's a pear, son. It's a little damaged and bruised on the side."

Watch out. Pear. Incoming. At your head.

I call it "yummy vegetables" which means they will get eaten. He calls them "broccoli with stems that are kind of tough" and they get left on the plate.

So yesterday he offered my kids frozen yogurt, but they wanted the ice cream. My son adamantly refused the frozen yogurt, which to a 3 year old looks and tastes the same as ice cream but because it sounds like the stuff he gets for a snack which to him is clearly not dessert, he didn't want it.

As my son was flipping out and my husband was about to toss "the frozen yogurt that I will insist on calling frozen yogurt because that's what it is even though it's pretty much ice cream" out into the sink, I pulled him aside and told him to pull it out of the freezer again and call it "ice cream."

He looked like I was asking him to lie on the stand.

But he obliged me, and said something like "Here you go" so as to not actually call it "ice cream," and my son ate the entire thing without coming up for air.

My husband looked at me suspiciously.

"Don't worry, dear. I'd never lie about, um, that."

(Ahem).

Comments

[magpie]

Yeah, well, that's what we do.
Last summer, we were in an all fish restaurant for lunch one day, and the child announced that she wanted chicken fingers. So I breezily ordered her a plate of fried clams - she ate them and loved them. Only later did I tell her what they were. And this summer? She actually ordered the fried clams.

[Karen (SubMommy)]

Oh man. SubHub "fibs" (a much nicer term, IMO) all the time.

"It's TURKEY! I don't like TURKEY!"

"No, buddy. It's meat."

"Oh. Ok."

[Julie @ The Mom Slant]

That honor code is a toughie, all right.

[MomInNorway]

When my daughter (2yo) insists that the chicken pieces are meatballs (which she loves) I do not make any attempt to correct her.

Son (5yo) has been told chicken makes him grow feathers (that'll disappear once he goes downstairs to check in the mirror) or broccoli are trees.. He's always been a good eater, but now sometimes need a bit of an excuse to start eating (and then he'll finish the entire thing).

[elz]

We are pretty lucky in that my kids generally eat everything-but, we've been known to call things "syrup chicken" to get around the sauce on the chicken. I will also say "Ooops, park/pool/store is closed, we can't go today."

[Amira]

Bwahahahahhahaa! The end was the best part. Aiman isn't really at a point where I need to lie to him, but when the time comes I would not be completely against it.

[Rocat]

I will lie about food. I was an extremely picky eater as a child and want my kids to be more well rounded than I was. I am lucky to have one very adventurous eater and on who's so-so. My son will try anything and I always praise him for at least making the attempt (which is required anyway!).
My daughter is pickier, so I will lie to put my own spin on things. Fish becomes "like chicken", etc. Thankfully she will eat just about any raw veggie she sees.
I prefer not to think of it as "lying" so much as "marketing".

[MU]

Ha, April. That's a Southern thing too, but with coke.

Sprite Coke
Ginger Coke

heh

[MommyNamedApril]

I haven't had to lie so far, but my son "corrects" me all the time. To him all meat is chicken. It's fishchicken, MOM. Or steakchicken or lambchicken, etc, etc. Same with frozen yogurt - it's frozenyogurticecream, MOM.

[laura]

i have....i have been known to refer to water as "sky juice" to appease my juice loving toddlers' past demand for juice. my 2 year old grandbaby loves drinking sky juice!
i had some pretty high and mighty thoughts on food and feeding my children then i became the mother of a child who literally allowed himself to starve for no clear physiological reason. tube feeding him for four plus years and teaching him what we do without scarcely any thought...eating and drinking...made me toss out all my rules and beliefs.
the way i see it calling water sky juice is no worse than playing santa claus, the easter bunny or the tooth fairy with your kids.

[EmmieJ]

We have a frozen yogurt place near our house that the kids love. My oldest called it the "Ice Cream Shop," which was adorable and made me feel like we were living in the 1950s. And then that little dude went and learned how to read. Boy did he school *us*. "MOOOM, it's not ICE CREAM, it's FROZEN YOGURT. Gah!" Also? He's six. Thankfully, they still love to go there. I'm pretty sure it's because of all the candy they get to pile on top of their ice cream/yogurt/whatever though.

[Meagan Francis]

The only thing I've ever lied about is fish, because all the kids have this knee-jerk negative reaction to eating fish even though they'd never tried it. I served some Panko crumb-covered salmon fillets, and it looked just like chicken patties, so I called it "chickeny". That's not really a LIE, though, right? I never said it was "CHICKEN", just that it was "Chicken-y", which it kind of was.

And they ate it. Dipped in lots of ketchup.

[Amelia Sprout]

I have a good eater, so I haven't needed to lie, but I am totally willing to lie if needed. About food. Not much else. I am fond of calling foods "like" something else, when it is true. We are pretty strict about eating new things, you have to try some of them. However, since she likes a lot of fruits & veggies, it is easy to make sure there is always something healthy along with something new, so she never starves.

[Angela]

I don't lie about food. And I don't sneak it into other foods without telling them. I want them to know what they're eating, and I really want them to love it for what it is. Who wouldn't love seared brussels sprouts with chopped kiwi?

I suppose I should have prefaced that by saying that my kids really are fabulous eaters. Hell, my oldest took took the brussels sprouts for lunch today.

[MaryHS]

I have had some luck introducing new food to my 3yo by asking her if she wanted to try something weird that she can use to gross out her friends. (I borrowed the idea from Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential... he first tried raw oysters because his brother&parents flipped out at the idea.)

[Redneck Mommy]

I lied about food. I will still lie about food if it means getting them to try something new. I will not lie about much else though. Not even the tough stuff. Drives my husband batty because he thinks kids need to be insulated. I think they need to be prepared for life. It's the one parenting battle we keep having. However, since I'm home with them, and he's not, I usually win.

[ame]

I got away with serving duck for years by telling my girls it was just "a long chicken". Sorry, kids, but Mama likes duck.

[Kathie Dapbim]

I'm afraid that all meat is sausage in our house... oh, wait... that came out wrong...

[Michelle]

I used to call pumpkin 'orange potato' so that it would get eaten. It used to work. But as we also eat sweet potato, this stopped working. (Though he loves pumpkin soup).

[Sam]

*snort*