Have you ever told a big fat Mommy lie in order to convince your kids to get chores done? I don’t mean making a promise and not keeping it, I mean just a little white lie here and there to encourage productivity. Keeping our rooms clean is this biggest issue in this household.
“If you sneak food into your room again it will attract big fat mice. Some get so big they can gobble YOU up”
“If you don’t clean this floor, the tooth fairy wont come! She won’t be able to walk to your bed.”
I am a liar.
My youngest is all personality with a wild imagination that continues to amaze me daily. He is absolutely obsessed with Star Wars and there is a continuous space battle at play between the Dark Side and the Jedi at any point in time. Every square inch of his bedroom, more specifically his bedroom FLOOR is covered in space ships, storm troopers, Ewoks and the whole Star Wars crew in tow.
I never have to wait for the next movie, its more fascinating to sit outside his door and just listen as his own creative story unfolds.
Due to all the chaos, my baby’s room was in desperate need of reorganizing. It’s difficult for his little ADHD mind to pick up after major battles such as this. He needed a fun, creative and organized method for clean up. (I’ll share more on ADHD and organizing in posts to come.)
That being said, I decided to give him an interesting old military ammo box to store some figures. Maybe that would be a super cool way to encourage him to put toys away.
Why is there a dusty ole’ ammo box under my bed when I’ve never been in the military?
It belonged to my Daddy and it’s one of those material items left behind that may or may not need to stay in my possession. I have a lot of those things, but I favor this little box because it because it was his shoe shine box.
“You always need to keep your boots shined,” he’d say as he walked around in those classy cowboy boots of his.
He definitely meant what he said considering the fact he’d whip that box out from under his desk AT CHURCH and shine my Sunday shoes if they were looking shabby on a Sunday morning.
Enough about that, lets move on to my lies!
One evening after a tough day of organizing the never ending pile of Star Wars toys, I brought him to my room and told him I had a surprise. I carefully lifted up the cover at the foot of my bed to reveal the magical ammo box in all its dusty military green glory.
“WOAH !!!” he shrieked.
He was much more excited than I expected.
“How would you like to have this in your room?” I asked as I waited for the mischievous sparkle in his eyes.
“I can put all my boys (storm troopers )in there! Where did it come from,” he asked as he excitedly pulled the rusty box out from under the bed.
“I don’t know. Maybe it came from a tank or an AT-AT Walker….. maybe a plane or the Death Star. What do YOU think ?”
As his precious little hands went to open the box I remembered the shoe shine materials were still in there. Just as I went to grab the box in attempt to save my lies from being exposed, he managed to get the dusty ole’ lid open and took a big sniff?
Why a big sniff?
Lord, if I only knew!
To my horrified amazement, excitement blasted across his sweet little face as he smiled and said, “Mommy ! It smells like space in here!”
Off he ran to show Daddy his new space box or whatever he thinks it might be. All I know is that my Mommy Lie was a sucess and after he’s done playing he puts everything away.
What kind of Mommy lies have you told to get chores done?
Keep those chores going until we meet again!
One Comment
Samantha Scott
I’ve definitely used the “The tooth fairy won’t be able to walk through this mess to get to your pillow.” more than once. My little white lies are in hopes to motivate them to clean their room. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.