Why????

[conuly]

Sent the nieces down yesterday with a small load of clothes to wash. They came up with the still damp clothes from the dryer. Well, it's an easy mistake that could happen to anybody, so I said I would go back down when I switched out the clothes and put those clothes in the dryer again.

When I did so, I realized that at the very bottom of the pile were the dirty (and somewhat stinky) clothes I'd sent them down with in the first place, and everything had to go back in the wash.

This was a little irritating, and I asked them about it this morning.

Explanations given:

You're wrong, we totally did put them in the wash! (No, had you done that there would not have been dirty clothes in the hamper under the clean clothes.)

Well, we must have missed some! (Try all. Also, there were no clothes in the washer or dryer.)

You're wrong, we totally did put them in the wash!!!! (No.)

YES!!! (No!)

It must have been the downstairs neighbors. (This is where I started yelling, because they were seriously suggesting that the downstairs neighbors, for reasons only known to them, took the clothes out of the wash, dried them without letting them become clean, snuck upstairs, and hid them under the clean but damp clothes in the hamper.)

You're yelling, why are you being so mean??? (The sad thing is that I wasn't even particularly upset, just irritated and confused, until they started lying. I hate stupid lies. They're just so insulting, and any story that depends on "you're totally wrong about what the evidence if your senses shows!" qualifies.)

I would have understood if they simply had never made it downstairs in the first place. But they went down and put clean clothes in the hamper! They were proud of it! WTF???

Comments

[janewilliams20]

One of those important lessons one has to learn before adulthood: how to lie competently
Edit: Unless, of course, you plan on becoming a politician.

[conuly]

It's all I ask.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Kids try all sorts of dumb tricks to get out of work. They'll "clean" their rooms by stuffing everything in the closet or under the bed, despite the fact that that has never worked. They'll stand there swearing they washed their obviously-still-dirty hands, when washing them would take less time than arguing about it and then washing them. They'll eat toothpaste to make their breath smell of it instead of brushing their teeth.

Why? Because humans are dirty apes by nature, and aren't easily trained to cleanliness. Particularly in the prepubescent years, when they go through the Feral Child phase: congratulations, it seems your nieces are just about there. For boys, it takes the form of Raised-By-Wolves Syndrome, where it's as if they'd never been taught any household or self-care skills. For girls, it's Princess-Of-Everything Syndrome, where it's as if they'd been waited on hand and foot all their lives. They only start to recover when they realize that desirable mates are not attracted to dirty apes.

It's well to treat lying to cover wrong-doing as a far more serious offense than the wrong-doing itself, and to belabor the point with Explanations about trust, disappointment, honor, etcetera ad nauseum until the child admits and apologizes for lying. But however tedious Explanations may be, they have to be backed up with physical consequences as well, like having to re-wash all the laundry while you go along to watch and make sure they do it correctly.

My Aspie boy I mentioned in another post, the inveterate sea-lawyer, would sit in the bathroom reading Calvin & Hobbes for an hour, and then raise a fuss, claiming that he HAD cleaned it. This usually worked on his Mom, because she'd get sucked into arguing about whether or not he had. It didn't work on me, because I'd just say "Well, it's not clean." Clean is the absence of dirt - a simple and self-evident definition; if dirt can be observed, the object is not yet clean; more effort must be applied.

I'm convinced that the reason so many men are dirt-blind is because their mommies let them get away with doing a half-ass job - that being so much easier than making them do the job over until they do it right. It's not just men, either - a lot of women these days are slobs too, because no one ever taught them how to keep a house. LOL, your girlies don't realize what a huge advantage in life they're getting by having an Auntie at home to nag them about cleanliness and scold them for dishonesty, but they will realize it some day. Probably about the time their own children are lying to try and evade their chores: goes around comes around.

*hugs* Hang in there!.