lies raul told his 3 year old recently

Trees talk to each other at night.

All fish are named either Lorna or Jack.

Before your eyeballs fall out from watching too much TV, they get very loose.

Tiny bears live in drain pipes.

If you are very very quiet you can hear the clouds rub against the sky.

The moon and the sun had a fight a long time ago.

Everyone knows at least one secret language.

When nobody is looking, I can fly.

We are all held together by invisible threads.

Books get lonely too.

Sadness can be eaten.

I will always be there.

lies i’ve told my 3 year old recently, by raul gutierrez

36 Comments leave a comment below

  1. That is so beautifull it makes me want to cry.

  2. this is awesome.

  3. love it!
    [as the mother of a 5 year old and a 2 year old, i will be able to add these to my already growing list of lies…]

  4. Aw, those are great!

  5. Early childhood is a time when people can believe anything wholeheartedly. These kinds of lies provide a source of deep wonder that lasts a lifetime.

    The other day there was thunder and lightning, and I remembered a time when I believed those sounds were made by the rough hewn bowling balls of Nordic trolls crashing into pins made of granite. But I didn’t just remember it, it brought the wonder of my childhood back up to the surface.

    It’s important for parents to capitalize on that openness while it’s there.

  6. This was EXACTLY what i needed right now- it made me laugh out loud. Thank you for posting this Tina.

  7. “Trees talk to each other at night; Everyone knows at least one secret language; Books get lonely too” are not lies. And I am 99% sure that “We are all held together by invisible threads” isn’t a lie either.

    I love it anyway! :)

  8. What crap. What utter bullshit. Give the kid real answers.

  9. What a wonderful poetic writing!
    Thank you very much!

  10. adorable. perhaps one day, the moon and the sun will make up.

  11. That was so sweet! I think it’s amazing how kids can believe anything; sometimes I really miss the days when I wasn’t so doubtful.

    I remember when I was younger, my mother told me the Sugar Cane Factory was a cloud maker, and that I could reach rainbows if I tried enough. And let’s not forget Santa Claus.

    Brava.

  12. eigentlich sehr schön, ausser die letzte aussage. die ist ziemlich traurig, aber natürlich sage ich das auch immer wieder zu meinem 3-jährigen.

  13. My baby brother thinks he is a pirate. He goes to sleep every night with the promise that “Captain Jack” will leave candy on the dining room table for him in the middle of the night, after he is asleep. (Candy meaning an assortment of health foods, plus a jellybean or two [heathconscious parents]).

    One day, recently, after my father and his mother had a very long week, he woke them at around 5:45, the usual time, and said:

    “DAD! CAPTAIN JACK FORGOT!”

    No jellybeans that morning.

    The strength of a person is buttressed by the walls of love parents build around them. They will believe anything if you keep them well, and then, if you have done your job right, when the time comes, they will laugh at the silly stories you told them.

    Like Captain Jack.

  14. I can’t think of them as lies. They are just a prove that grownups can have imagination too. A very nice thought, don’t you think?

    My dad used to tell me things like that all the time and I’m sure they are helping me today to have a smile, knowing life can be so hard.

  15. You can eat sadness.

    Another morbidly obese teenager with an unnatural attraction to black makeup gets their start.

  16. Tiny bears do live in drain pipes !

    They’re called rats.

  17. When I was a kid, we lived near the ocean. The shore there was very rocky, and there were alot of large rocks that my brother and I would climb and jump around on. This made our parents very nervous, they constantly thought that eventually one of the large rocks would shift and crush one of us.

    So my dad said, “Those rocks move every one thousand years, and this could be the year.”

    Obviously this made my brother and I think that there was some mystical force which would make the rocks move around on their own.

  18. To a three-year-old, these aren’t lies. They still live in a magical world, where everything is a story. Whether it’s true or not is simply not relevant. That’s why young children can’t lie – they don’t see the difference. It’s like saying that Shakespeare lied because there are no witches at all.

    Love this. I like to think that my boys love those little crazy stories.

  19. I hope you really didn’t tell your kid this stuff. I remember being 3 years old quite clearly and I remember when my mother told me that “all women have eyes in the backs of their heads”. I really believed that was true.

    When you’re three, you’re parents word is the gospel and lies like that really mess with you. They’re the only link you have to understanding the world and if you can’t trust what they say you could develop some trust issues later in life!

    When you kid asks you a tough question how about giving him/her a clear explanation instead of taking the easy road and feeding them a lie? You’ll be surprised how much they understand.

  20. Raoul is just amazing – so talented. I met him and his family in Brooklyn last summer.

  21. I belly laughed reading this list!
    Especially the part about small bears in drain pipes!

    The last lie is pretty sad though.

  22. This time is considered a magical time, because it’s a time when she still trusts you and hasn’t yet figured out that you lie to her.

  23. I just spent some time perusing Raul’s blog…amazing. Great stuff.

  24. Wonderful. I’d add one more to the list: “No. Daddy isn’t drunk.”

  25. so touching it takes my breath away. Thank you for sharing.

  26. Oh I found this great and got a little choked up with the last one “I’ll always be there” What parent has the heart to tell their 3year old that someday they will die. Besides what kind of 3 year old will understand the truth to some of these. Others are just imagination at work. I think as adults we tend to lose touch with the simple things of imagination and become far to serous for our own good.

  27. Raul’s blog is a thing of wonder. I wonder how could I have not known about it (I’ve followed his pictures on flickr for a long time). His writing about his children and his personal narratives have left me in happy tears all afternoon. My officemates keep peeking through the glass at me wondering what is going on. THe category of his blog called nightmusings is particularly dreamy.

  28. i fail to see how lying to a child is inspiring…it will show them that lying is ok, as long as it is imaginative? and there is a difference between story-telling and lying, as i have discovered many times over the years…anyway, the truth can be much more interesting for children than lies…

  29. I suppose that he told his 3 yr old that some invisible man in the sky that was actually really three seperate entities sent one of those down to this earth to save everyone from their sins. But only, of course, if they “believe” in this sky faerie because without belief you’ll be punished… lol!

    the lies we tell our children indeed.

  30. hey! some of those are TRUE!

  31. Super list. Thanks for highlighting them for us.

    The whoppers my dad told us as kids were always our favorites. I remember so vividly whispering and giggling with my sister at night from the top bunk bed to the bottom bunk bed as we tried to sort it all out. Was there really a lion that lived down the street? Maybe. Could dad really be in two places at one time? Definitely. Could he hear our thoughts? Only if it was very quiet. Was our aunt really a troll? Probably. If we ate too much candy would we start to grow backwards? Unsure, but why risk it…

    These are the things childhood is made of.

  32. It’s funny for me to see that so many of your readers had fathers like mine (I guess the mothers don’t lie!). My father told us stories/lies all the time and they filled us with wonder about the world. As I got older and learned that each story was false, it would hit me with a little jolt and some anger that my Dad had played a joke on me. But as I got older still I now think these “lies” showed a great imagination, if also a lack of patience to explain the mundane truth about some things.

    My favorite example of my father’s humor came when I was 4 or 5. I had just learned how to put on and tie my shoes and was learning the concept of right and left. As I was putting on my socks that morning, it occurred to me that my socks must also be left and right, like my shoes. So I held them up and asked my father, “Which sock is the left sock and which is the right?” Without blinking he pointed and said, “That is the left sock and that is the right.”

    The next day I forgot the whole conversation and never again thought about left and right socks until I was about 9, and then realized the joke he had played on me. Now that he is gone, it is a fine memory.

  33. What a super link and a super blog. I spent literally hours reading it. The author’s writing literally gave me chills. Thanks Swissmiss!

  34. Apparently his boy is 4 now and he just wrote up a new list of “lies”
    http://www.mexicanpictures.com/headingeast/2009/08/lies-ive-told-my-4-year-old-re.html

    Love these just as much!