I recently gave my daughter my old dollhouse from when I was a child. I also got it when I was in the third grade along with the book "king of the dollhouse"...It is a story about a little girl who has a dollhouse and then a real family moves in! I loved it when I was a kid...I actually used to leave food in my dollhouse, etc and thought that a family really would move in/did move in.
Fast forward to today....Amanda has read the book 3 times and is now doing the same thing that I did...she's even writing little notes, etc and putting it in.
So...here's where the little white lie part comes in. I started out innocently just moving around furniture or taking away part of the food she left out (and leaving crumbs in other rooms) . Then....I left a dollhouse-sized people coat in one of the closets. The whole family got involved in this lie and now all of the kids are waiting to see what the dollhouse people do next...and my husband is waiting to see what I can come up with next. So last night I was up until....4.30am (yes, you read that right) finding pictures on google and shrinking them to dollhouse size. I printed them out, cropped them and then printed out 2 copies of a creative memories album on card stock.....Then I cut out some sample creative memories page layouts that were the exact right size and attached the photos...and I actually...sewed the whole thing together. I can't finish an album of my own, but I even journaled in teeny tiny print in this one.
I had a ball doing it, and the look on Amanda's face as she raced through the house was priceless.
But...when is lying to your children ok? As fun as this is....is it ok to perpetuate a lie with her of these proportions? I have spent the last 2 hours wondering if it is wrong to do this even though it is fun....will she resent me when she realizes that it was me the whole time or will she look back on this when she is an adult with fond memories?
kris
Fast forward to today....Amanda has read the book 3 times and is now doing the same thing that I did...she's even writing little notes, etc and putting it in.
So...here's where the little white lie part comes in. I started out innocently just moving around furniture or taking away part of the food she left out (and leaving crumbs in other rooms) . Then....I left a dollhouse-sized people coat in one of the closets. The whole family got involved in this lie and now all of the kids are waiting to see what the dollhouse people do next...and my husband is waiting to see what I can come up with next. So last night I was up until....4.30am (yes, you read that right) finding pictures on google and shrinking them to dollhouse size. I printed them out, cropped them and then printed out 2 copies of a creative memories album on card stock.....Then I cut out some sample creative memories page layouts that were the exact right size and attached the photos...and I actually...sewed the whole thing together. I can't finish an album of my own, but I even journaled in teeny tiny print in this one.
I had a ball doing it, and the look on Amanda's face as she raced through the house was priceless.
But...when is lying to your children ok? As fun as this is....is it ok to perpetuate a lie with her of these proportions? I have spent the last 2 hours wondering if it is wrong to do this even though it is fun....will she resent me when she realizes that it was me the whole time or will she look back on this when she is an adult with fond memories?
kris
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