We get up and get ready.

We get Brooklynn up and get ready.

Brooklynn doesn’t want to get up. She cries and tries to keep her pajamas on. And then she eats some yogurt and it’s all better.

Well guess what, Brooklynn. Mom and Dad don’t want to get up that early either. But we don’t cry about it, at least not so dramatically.

We use the term “broken” a lot in our house. Sometimes it refers to the iPod Touch that Brooklynn calls her phone. We tell her, “Your phone is broken,” and we mean that the battery is dead and it needs to be plugged in to charge. It’s probably not the right term to use and I’m probably underestimating her ability to understand charging, but she now knows that when the iPod is broken, plugging it in will fix it so we can use it later.

Lying? In the strictest definition, I suppose so. But it fits with her understanding of the world. Now, what about the fact that we sometimes tell her the iPod is broken when it is still half charged? Because she doesn’t need to watch a movie on it during the middle of the day when we should be playing with blocks or running outside. Lying? You bet. But it gets the results we want and it doesn’t seem to cause her any harm.

When we go out shopping, Brooklynn sometimes want to get in my car. It’s kind of pain, because in our garage, I park close enough to the wall that the passenger side of the car is inaccessible. Brooklynn gets in the back seat on the driver’s side, climbs across, and then I reach back from the front seat and buckle her in. Meanwhile, Rhiannon waits outside until we’re done and I back the car out so she can also get in. And when we come home, the process works in reverse. For a 10 minute trip to the grocery store, it’s easier just to take Rhiannon’s car with all the doors available.

So we tell Brooklynn that Daddy’s car is broken and we’ll fix it later but right now we need to take Mom’s car. She’s fine with this reasoning and usually gets in the other car without question. Lying? Yes. Absolutely. But is it doing any harm?

Lately, we’ve been going through a phase where Brooklynn wakes up once in a while during the night, and since we’ve taken the side of her crib off again, she can get out and come find us. Sometimes, a quick hug is all it takes to get her back in bed, but other times, the tears and wailing starts as soon as we head for her bedroom door.

She wants someone to sit on the ottoman next to her bed. This is not a habit we want to get in to, but she will follow us out if we don’t sit with her. So, if we tell her that we have to use the potty² she will agree to stay in her bed and wait for us to come back.

I know that Brooklynn remembers things, often for a few days. We are past the point of out-of-sight out-of-mind distraction tricks, so sometimes I wonder if she remembers that we never came back even though we said we would. Sure, I think she settles down and falls asleep quickly, but does she ever lie there, quietly waiting for Mom or Dad to hold up their end of the deal and return?

Yes, we are lying to her, but it helps everyone get some sleep during the night. It makes our lives easier. Pretty much all the lies we tell Brooklynn are to make our lives easier. It doesn’t seem like getting her away from watching a movie to play outside or take a different car to the store has a negative impact on her. But are we teaching her any sort of lesson about not always getting her way?

When she wants a certain type of snack, sometimes we tell her it’s all gone, even though there is more in the cupboard. She will often let it go and we don’t have to deal with her crying when we tell her that she can’t have anymore. So she learns that she can’t have it because it’s not an option, not just because we said so.

We lie to make our lives easier. We lie to make things go smoothly. We lie.

It’s something I thought I would avoid as much as possible, and yet, I find myself doing it more and more. And I lie to myself in thinking that I’m always ok with it.

The truth? We’re kind of learning on the fly here. I don’t know the long term outcome of what we’re doing. Does it mean I’m going to stop the little lies? Probably not. Maybe I’ll try to tell myself that just the fact I recognize what we’re doing makes it ok and that we can change later when Brooklynn needs to learn some of life’s tougher lessons.

Maybe if I tell myself that enough, I’ll even start to believe it.

I’m not going to name any specific names here¹, but one member of our household has a potty in the living room. And one member of the household poops on said potty from time to time. And, one member of the household likes to look at what is in the potty.

Now, if you stand up from pooping without finishing, sometimes poop ends up on the floor. And on your foot. And back on the floor from where you took steps with poop on your floor.

And then another member of the household gets to pick poop up off the floor and scrub the carpet. And the offending member? Well, the offending member gets a sticker.

Like I said: finish what you started. Good advice.

For naps, there were times she would go up and lay down on her own and there were times when she would get up once and we would have to put her back in bed, but that was the worst of the transition. For a week, she did great.

Then the thunder happened right at bedtime one night. Brooklynn is very concerned about thunder. It’s loud. Really, she’s very concerned about any loud noises. Loud trucks, loud dogs, loud planes. We hear about all of them. “Truck, loud!”

Yes, she typically places her adjectives after her nouns. Rhiannon and I think that she’s just ready to learn one of the romance languages without having to relearn word order. Yes, it’s probably going to hurt her grade in English class, but isn’t pre-emptive bilingualism worth it?

So, thunder at bedtime. She was asleep. Soundly. Thunder loud enough to physically shake the house will do that to a two year-old. She got out of bed, opened her door, saw me sitting at the computer, and closed it again. She knew wasn’t supposed to be up, but “Thunder!” Rhiannon ended up laying down with her in our bed to get her back to sleep that evening. The next night, no thunder, but we went through the same thing. Up, see me, close door. Open door, close door. Cry. Get put back in bed. Open door, close door, cry. Get put back in bed. I would keep writing it over and over, but I don’t think anyone would actually finish the post at that point.

Rhiannon finally sat on the ottoman in Brooklynn’s room until she fell asleep, at which point, we figured it was just a hiccup from the storm the night before and we would soon be back to normal.

1 am, we had a toddler pounding on our door. 4am, she was finally asleep. The worst part was that it seemed like she wanted to play and run around the entire time. She was in our bed. She was in her own bed. She was sitting in a chair with me. She was back in her bed. Nothing mattered and nothing could get her to stay in bed. At about 3:30, we put the side of the crib back on and let her cry it out until she went to sleep.

The next afternoon, we took the side back off. Naptime came, and this was a small kid who had a severe lack of sleep the night before. She wouldn’t stay in bed even though she was clearly tired. We were getting ready for her birthday party and so we eventually just put her in the room and went downstairs. She fell asleep on her own on the futon in our the loft upstairs.

That night, the crib side went back on and she’s been sleeping great again. Maybe we’ll try to go back to the toddler bed in a week or so. The parental sanity can only take so much crazy at one time.