Whether you call their products fibs, lies, tall tales, or whoppers, grandchildren begin to practice the art of dissembling early and, if recent research has it right, often. According to some studies, the average 4-year-old tells a lie once every two hours. By 6, it’s once every 90 minutes.
Children see grandparents as likely rubes for their scams, schemes, or misdirections in the pursuit of the things they want, like TV, candy, or a later bedtime — or the avoidance of what they really don’t want, like punishment, vegetables, or bedtime. Many kids are confident that there’s a grand-sucker born every minute. After all, who in their lives is more easygoing, more eager to please, and more willing to give them what they want? Even if grandma and grandpa are hipper to the children's manipulations than they let on, so what? As Barbara Boorstyn, 68, a grandmother of two in Brooklyn, N.Y., asks, “What are grandparents for anyway?”
There’s rarely great subtlety to grandchildren's machinations. Often, they follow the same principle as when they were little and they rolled up in a ball with their eyes closed, hoping nobody could see them.
Here are some of our favorite grandchildren manipulation strategies. (Don't tell the kids we're on to them.)
Turning on the Waterworks
Jane Sneider’s 5-year-old granddaughter, Aidan, has a future on the stage, judging from her talent for producing crocodile tears. “She can start and stop the waterworks at will,” says Sneider, 75, a grandmother of four, from Westport, Conn. Aidy often does her act when she's trying to get her big brother, Sam, in trouble for some real or imagined offense. "Her big brown eyes well up. Her lips quiver and she hides her head and sobs loudly," Sneider says. Fortunately, all it takes for this grandmother to stop the show is to say, "Aidy, look me in the eye. Can you even take yourself seriously?” The tears dry up instantly, and she begins to laugh herself silly.
The Hunger Artist
To hear his grandmother tell it, Cody Berrios, 6, hasn’t had a square meal in weeks. Cody's mom, Victoria Morey, of Brooklyn, N.Y., says, “My mom actually asked me the other day if I ever feed him, because every time I drop him off with her, he tells her he’s starving and that he didn't have any breakfast or lunch." The pint-size first-grader can put away an entire second meal at grandma’s, Morey says, "without fessing up that mommy didn't actually starve him at home."
Just Looking for a Ride
Susan Stock's 4-year-old grandson, Isaac, may be ready to leave home to travel the open road by the time he’s 8. He’s already asserting his independence with his grandmother, 69, of Maplewood N.J. She picked him up one day from preschool, and he told her matter-of-factly that she could just drop him off at the corner bakery. “Daddy says it’s okay,” he told her. Actually, Dad didn't.
"Mommy Says..."
Julie McVey, 63, of Lincoln, Calif., says her eight grandchildren all have at least one thing in common: They like to stretch the truth. "They're not necessarily flat-out lies," McVey says, but their own "adaptations of the truth," or the world "the way they’d like it to be." That ideal world features fairly permissive, if not irresponsible, mothers, based on what the kids tell McVey: "Mommy says we don’t have to finish our dinner to watch TV, Mommy says we can stay up as late as we want, Mommy says we can sleep wherever we want, Mommy says we don’t have to eat vegetables, Mommy says I can eat this giant gumball and then three more," and so on. These grandchildren never let the truth get in the way of an opportunity.
Confess Nothing
It’s all about plausible deniability for the granddaughters of Edee Edelstein, 69, a grandmother of three, from New York City. They simply won’t flag under interrogation. “I saw my granddaughter, Eva, come out of the fridge with a huge, suspicious lump in her cheek. When I asked what she had in her mouth, she mumbled, 'nothing.'" As the chocolate dripped down her chin, Edelstein recalls, "I said, 'Well, it looks like something,' and she said, 'Oh, I found something.' 'What?' 'I can't tell you.'" The girl got away with sneaking the snack, Edelstein says, not because the lie worked, but because "she’s so hilarious, I just had to laugh it off."
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