30 Jan My Sons Aren’t Very Good Liars

My three-year-old son, James, is a brutally honest lad.

“Daddy, I love mommy better than you,” he says just about every week.

And he’s not kidding either. When my wife is out of town, he acts more loving toward me, but as soon as she returns, he’s right back to being a momma’s boy.

If James is in a magnanimous mood, he’ll tell me that he also loves me “a lot. ” But when he wants to wind me up, he’ll say, “I only love you a ‘lil, ‘lil bit,” and he’ll hold up his thumb and index finger about a millimeter apart to demonstrate how little affection he has for me.

We are born honest and as we get older we turn into liars. It’s a gradual process. My five-year-old son, Leo, is mostly truthful but he’s already learning to lie when it suits him. My wife found out this morning, however, that at least one of his classmates is still in the brutally honest phase of childhood.

She was asked to come to Leo’s school to give a 20-minute presentation on cave art, a topic she knows nothing about. Jen dutifully went to our local library, read up on the subject and did her best to put on a good show. But at the end of her presentation a little boy politely raised his hand and said, “That wasn’t very interesting.”

Eventually we all learn not to speak our minds but it’s fun to be around little people who say whatever the fuck they want. And for all we bitch about how exhausting it is to take care of little ones, we love the fact that our kids aren’t yet embarrassed to be seen with us in public. On the contrary, Leo was thrilled to have his mom at school with him today. It’s going to suck when our kids act like they don’t love us at all. Not even a ‘lil ‘lil bit.