The boy can’t tell a lie to save his life. This is good, whenever he’s trying to spin a complicated web of deception, he does the furtive eye movements and over elaborates his story to the point where he eventually gives up and admits the truth. You do have to be careful not to lead him to an answer though, or he will just agree with you because in that 4 year old mind of his, that’s not really the same as lying.
Fifi on the other hand could probably already outmanoeuvre Machiavelli. She’s bright, inquisitive and adept at playing people off against each other. And she’s only three. The Mini Jammy Dodger’s Incident (hereinafter known simple as “the incident”) is a perfect example of this.
Sunday morning is swimming lesson’s, with Brenda’s Swim School. Brenda herself is lovely and used to regularly beat Sharon Davies in competition before an injury brought a premature end to her swimming career. So before swimming, it’s always a race to get the kids up (despite they fact they’ve been awake for hours) and breakfasted before we have to leave. This Sunday morning, Fifi ambled into the kitchen after leaving almost all her cereal and helped herself to a packet of mini jammy dodgers. I told her she couldn’t have those, to which she replied, “I’ll go and check with Mummy.” Two minutes later she ambled back into the kitchen and proclaimed Mummy had given her permission to eat the biscuits.
I let it lie but later that evening discussing the incident, it transpired what had actually happened was somewhat different to Fifi’s version of events. After being thwarted, Fifi wandered upstairs and told her Mummy I had given her the biscuits. Mummy had said that’s nice, I hope you ate your breakfast. Fifi then strolled downstairs and told me the requisite permission had been given and proceeded to stuff her chops with her favourite thing in the world- biscuits.
I need to go on some sort of secret service interrogation course or I’m going to be stuffed.