How I spent my day catching in the rye

I'm a pragmatic-relativist (please don't stop reading). I accept that "the truth" is a construction composed of equal parts contextual perception, socio-historical framing, and the empirical evidence hewn from the describable consequences of lived experience. I'm far more concerned with how our "truths" serve us than any measurable veracity that can be gleaned from a forensic autopsy of it's claims. I admire the good and the useful more than the awkward push and pull bullying that's required to determine a winner in "right vs. wrong" distinctions. Nonetheless, I am also a dad who must sometimes confront the sloppy righteousness of his children's straight-faced lying.

That my kids lie on occasion, that they play with the communing of perceived and possible truths, is not what wrecks me. They lie (or stretch or play with the truth) because they are human, and that is a part of the human experience -- to shape the world into the vision we want it to be over and above how the world may actually be experienced by others. What wrecks me are those moments when their wide-eyed earnestness evidences a sincere belief that their lying is successful at remaking the truth and that it is even making a situation better or solving a problem.

This is hard. Writing about them in this way feels really vulnerable to me, like the scale of justice is gonna drop one arm on my neck, wrestle me to the ground and tattoo "hypocrite" across my forehead. I think we often presume that when we talk about our parenting, we're talking about something "finished," or already all mapped out, when really all were doing is saying, "here's how I responded (or hope to respond) to the kid when they did the same damn thing I've done or am capable of doing."

When my kid builds a lie that he forgot to do the school project he'd been assigned, when he adds an extension onto the lie by telling his teacher that he doesn't have the project because MY perfectly operational computer is not working because the battery has died (and the plug won't work either, he clarifies when prodded), and when all of this lie assembling takes place a mere two hours after being lovingly lectured on the disappointment his mother and I feel when he lies about playing the video game he's not supposed to be playing and turns off as we enter the room ... well, he screwed up. People make wrong or selfish choices sometimes.

We all stretch or bend or shape the facts to suit us on occasion. He's only eleven, but we both know that truth wrangling is tricky business. However, without the acumen derived from years of failed experiments, my son's lying spills and bounds all hopeful and confident that his efforts at revising the world to suit his own needs carries an inevitable triumph of success and a shinny hue of finality.

His head bows when we confront him. At first, he is truly surprised that the glue he'd used to erect his lie had failed to adhere. His eyes twitch underneath the small soft paws he tries to hide under. He is embarrassed, yes, but it is the shock of disappointment carved into his brow that wrecks me most severe. He's spent his youth listening to adults rail against the doublespeak that is a part of our political lexicon. He's participated in unpacking and admiring the persuasive powers of advertising, fiction, even our cultural history, and the myriad of other communicative situations in which "truth" is a flexible or liquid end whose means of arrival require choice, strategy and skill. And yet, he has fumbled in his own meaning making that fails to persuade his parents or his teachers. He is caught -- and (surprise, surprise) I am the catcher.

Discussing this with a friend, I realized that there is a part of me that simply wants him to be a better liar. Not "the dad" part, but the mopey, cynical part of me that recognizes the role that confident bravado and spin-doctoring play in out culture. In just about every aspect of our consumerist culture -- from stock markets to kids marketing to college entrance essays -- people are rewarded for how successful they are at getting other folks to buy into what they say. Sure the truth helps in these "sales," but so does playing with or bending the truth if it makes you a more persuasive seller of things or ideas. I want my kid to succeed. I want him to be confident and prove a worthy shaper and seller of ideas to the world. I even like the idea if him being rewarded for doing this well.

My contradictions are clear and I fully admit to them. I suppose my role as lie-catcher is pedagogical at it's heart. He (not to leave out his younger sister but) needs to know that I and others value not just "the truth," but the effort it takes to aim towards the truth. Further, he needs to know that there are consequences for avoiding truthfulness, such as punishment, shame and embarrassment. Most importantly, in "catching" his lie I am teaching him that being-caught is always a possible outcome and that he must recognize the power he wields in owning the choices he makes whenever he acts to tell "the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth," and all the variants of not-truths he'll find himself telling in his life. He is only human, and only humans are gifted with the burdens of being caught up in the telling of our lives.