Iris was in the bathroom with wet sleeves and hands covered in foam. Beside her, the bottle of liquid soap was nearly empty and the sink looked like a tiny bubble bath.
Nora looked at the sink, then at Iris.
There are moments when the answer is so unconvincing that you are not sure whether to laugh or get annoyed. Everything is right there in front of you. So why deny something so obvious?
The instinct may be to make the lie the problem immediately: “Don’t lie to me, I can see you did it.” But at three or four years old, that little “no” can sometimes mean something different from a carefully planned adult attempt to deceive.
Iris may simply know that she was not supposed to empty the soap. She may wish very strongly that it had not happened. For a few seconds, saying “it wasn’t me” may be the quickest way she has found to try to make the problem disappear.
When the question invites a young child to deny it
There is something odd about Nora’s question too: she already knows the answer.
By asking “Did you empty the soap?”, she gives Iris two options. Say yes and immediately face her mother’s reaction, or try a “no” that may feel much more comfortable in the moment.
So when the facts are already obvious, sometimes we can skip the interrogation and begin with what we can see.
Then we can try to understand what happened without making the boundary disappear.
“Were you trying to make lots of bubbles?”
“The soap isn’t for pouring out like this. Now we’re going to clean it up together.”
That does not mean telling the truth is unimportant. But perhaps every obvious little lie does not need to become a big lesson about honesty.
Because sometimes, behind a particularly unconvincing “it wasn’t me”, there is mostly a child who has just realised they did something they were not supposed to do.
And a sink full of bubbles to clean.
