What's a Lie?
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| Fri, 12-23-2005 - 9:32pm |
Today I had an interesting conversation with a woman, nice lady, great mom... and that's why I am so blown away by what she told me. She's got a good kid, all honor roll, doesn't drink, no drugs, etc. We'll call him D.
Several weeks ago when I was having such problems with my DS-16 (B), B and I missed each other after Saturday school and they saw him walking down the road right around the time I was making my second trip to school. They picked him up and took him to their house.
I thought DS had run away and I didn't immediately call her house because I know for a fact that she would call me if he had of run away and shown up there. A couple of hours later I did finally call and D answered the phone. I asked if he'd seen B and he says "Yes, we saw him about 2:30 walking down by the convenience store." That's it. Meanwhile, B is standing right there at their house!
Finally, after another hour and a half of driving around looking for B and making more phone calls from pay phones, DH and I spot him with D in the convenience store parking lot. I finally find out that B was at D's house the whole time I was out looking for B. D also told me that what he said was not a lie.
I was livid. I told him he'd better not ever lie to me again and then I left for the grocery store, where I see his mother in the parking lot. Still unsure that I had the whole story, I asked her about it. And I told her about my phone call and that D had lied to me.
Fast forward several weeks (5 or 6?) to today. I talked to her for the first time since then and she told me that she has been still kinda upset with me for calling D a liar and that I was the first person to ever tell her that D had told a lie. (I'm sure that's the truth, he usually is a good kid) She then tells me that D didn't lie to me, that he made a bad choice and that she had also told him that.
I told her it was still a lie, albeit a lie of omission, but a lie nevertheless.
Is it just me? Do you consider that a lie? What would you tell your child if he/she had done that?
zz

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I think you did the right thing calling "D" on his reply to you. When we are in the heat of a moment its difficult to find the exact right word for something but I think "liar" suits this one very well. He may not have told you something that wasn't true but he's old enough I'm sure to understand that when you call up a house saying you're looking for your son and has he seen him that you also want to know if he knows where he is now.
The kid hid the complete truth and gave you a partial answer and while maybe he and his mom can argue semantics with you, what he did was wrong, plain and simple.
However, don't misplace your anger. Ultimately while what "D" did was ethically and morally wrong, its not his responsibility to tell you where your son went to. Your son is the one who is at fault for not telling you his whereabouts and while it may "take a village" to raise our kids, no one is compelled to do so. Your son should have picked up the phone, knowing you'd be upset and knowing that he put his friend on the spot and called you. What D did wasn't exemplery behaviour but he's just as much a kid as your son and good grades doesn't necessarily mean he'll always make the right choices either.
As for his mom, she should be reprimanding her son for the behaviour but unless you guys were very close friends beforehand, I wouldn't expect her to be too happy about continuing the friendship. After all, you may look upon her as having a son who lied. She looks up your son as a difficult kid who took off from home and didn't tell his mother where he was. I'd say she has as much reason for concern as you do....
D's mom knows well the problems my son has been having, and if she has concerns that's ok, I understand that. And I'm not really angry at either of them, I just don't feel I can trust them anymore.
But... if it had been my son that lied to her I would have made him call and apologize to her. But that's just me.
zz
I have been wondering, why when you found B & D together, did you even start the argument over if
I know that my son was at fault here, more than D or anyone else.
And I didn't start an argument when I found them, I just asked both of them what had happened and why. I was very mad but I kept it under control, lol, not an easy chore at that moment!
I hope it didn't sound like I was blaming D more than B, cause nothing could be further than the truth. It just really surprised me that D's mother has been upset with me (unknown to me) for some time cause I told her D had lied to me. She told me that he'd never been accused of telling a lie before, and I believe her justifying his deceit as not being a lie will help her hold onto her belief that her son never lies.
Thanks,
zz
Did the boys tell you WHY they did this?
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That is the difference between you and the other Mom. She can't really see what happened here is a problem. At the minimum, her DS made a bad decision and he will learn from it if Mom doesn't sugar coat it too much. In the worst case, he isn't to be trusted regardless of the good student, etc... I'm leaning more to the 2nd scenario as she seems too protective, sometimes means we are hiding behaviour of our kids! Dee.
IMO it is a lie of omission, and as a deceitful act it is as wrong as a bold-faced lie. The burden of how to word the question should not be on you... if you had asked D "do you know where B is now?" perhaps he could have "not lied" there too, on the technicality of not knowing whether B was still in the bathroom or if he was watching TV etc.
My dd is one of those people that takes words very literally when it favors her, and very liberally when that is more in her interest. Combined with similar types of not lieing by technicality, it has led to some big trust issues. In the long run I think that it comes back to bite these people in the rear.
As for D's mom, she can be offended and defend her son all she wants and hope that he doesn't use the same techniques with her! I wonder how she would see it if he told her that "X's parents will be home for the whole party" allowing her to assume that meant that the party would be supervised, when in fact the parents would be staying in a back room and turning a blind eye to drug and alcohol use? Lies matter more when you are the injured party?
In my experience when my kids and their friends got to about 15-16yo is when these types of differences in parenting started showing up, it definitely made it a challenge to get parents to "work together" to keep the kids on the right track.
I guess it would depend on what your definition of "seen" is. I'm only kidding, of course it's a lie. A lie of omission, and still a lie. Would it be a lie if you were to ask your husband "are you seeing another woman?" and he were to tell you no, of course not, because he's actually seeing another man?
And by the way, deceit is lie's big brother...
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Along the same lines...Of course not! Unless his hoochy was in the room in plain sight... :-)
zz, I'm also following this discussion on the parenting debates board.
They're jumping to alot of conclusions over there. I can understand why they would, given what they know of the situation. But on this board, where I know more of your situation and have read about other incidents with your son, I find it appalling that they would make such judgements. At the same time it just shows how little anyone knows about a person's situation by reading one post.
I just wanted to say this reminded me how easy it is to forget that there's more to the picture and to keep that in mind when responding to other posts!
Thanks.
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