True Confessions of a Three Year Old

Gabe has been really working on his lying skills the past few weeks. For instance, just last week, he spilled a mess of jelly beans on the floor and I got all up in his business about it.

"We have to pick those jelly beans up off the floor. They're too small for Norah. If she gets a hold of one and puts it in her mouth, she might choke," I chastised.

He gave me one of his serious, frowny looks and said, "I didn't spill jungle beans (that's what he still calls them, for reasons known only to him). DADDY spilled jungle beans."

Now, obviously, he's starting to show some promise in his skills. He's beginning to grasp the concept of blaming someone else for something that he's done. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't really have anyone to blame that is believable (a problem I shared with him on Sunday when I ate one of the cupcakes Libby bought for later that night, and, when she found out, I had to claim that Norah got into them because it was only the two of us in the house at the time of the incident), but as that circumstance changes, I will have to use my not substantial deductive skills to try and keep up with his story telling.

Anyway, despite this growing proclivity, his natural inclination is still to tell the truth. This is something I've tried to encourage by desperately avoiding getting angry or showing him that he's in big trouble when I ask him about something that he's done and he admits to it. It stands to reason that if he gets in more trouble for getting caught in a lie than for telling the truth, he'll naturally choose to tell the truth when he gets busted and take the lesser consequence. At least this is the working theory. In reality, all it will do is make him a better liar--as it is infinitely better to take NEITHER consequence. But I suppose that's not a bad skill to teach a child, considering the best liars in the world also tend to be the most successful people. I don't like that truth, but I have to accept it, and I should be doing all I can to give my kids a leg up in the world.

Sometimes, though, he'll start spouting off confessions, more or less out of the blue, for no good reason that I can discern. Perhaps he has the three year old equivalent of a guilty conscience. Or maybe, as I think was the case today, it's just something that he's thinking about and the pathways between his brain and his mouth are like new freeways--completely unobstructed by the hazard, reconstruction, and repair obstacles created necessitated by decades of use. Whatever the reason, while he was eating his lunch and I was sitting in the other room feeding Norah, he made an interesting admission, which I was able to coax out of him again in front of the camera.

Obviously he wasn't too concerned about this little tidbit of information. And it came as no surprise to me, either, as I've seen him perpetrating various versions of these crimes several times. He's still a notorious everything taster (over the weekend Libby caught him carefully picking sand off his tongue, which he openly admitted to having just eaten). I'd say it's proof that he's a slow learner when it comes to foods that are and aren't good to eat except he'll remember foods he doesn't like instantly and after only one tasting. Probably it's just a "weird" thing.

News flash! I started this post while both of the kids were sleeping and they woke up when I still had a few paragraphs left. I brought them down and set them to work watching Dora so I could come in here and finish. Right after I uploaded the video, Gabe came up to the gate between my office and the dining room and said, "Baby got something something something." "What?" I said. "Norah got something something something" (we still lean heavily on context to put together much of what Gabe's saying at this point, and without that, I had no idea what he was trying to say). So I got up and went into the living room to see what he was talking about.

Forgetfully, I left a little bowl filled with peanut shell remnants (my favorite snack because I'm an old man) sitting on the end table, well within Norah's range. As she's wont to do, she pulled it down and then went ahead and spread the shells all over much of the living room carpet. While I was cleaning up the mess I figured I'd make it a teaching moment by saying, "Oh, no. Daddy did a bad thing. I left something messy in Norah's reach. I know better than that."

To which Gabe replied, "Daddy did a bad thing. You need to go to time out chair."

"Oh?" I said. "How long do I need to sit there as punishment?"

"Three hours," he stated plainly. Obviously we've got a little more work to do on our time recognition. Either that or he really wanted me out of his way for the rest of the afternoon.