Lies Parents Tell Their Kids in an Effort to Keep Them in Line

This morning on the Mid-Mo Morning Show we had a discussion about lies. Not bad lies. Not necessarily good lies, either, but at least understandable lies.

What brought this up was an article from Reader's Digest, which mentioned some really funny lies that parents have come up with, including: "When the ice cream truck's music is on, it means they are out of ice cream." Brilliant! Dishonest, but brilliant!

One of our callers, Nate, told us that he fills up his daughter's box of Cocoa Puffs with the knock-off brand. The daughter claims that she'll only eat actual Cocoa Puffs. This guy buys the generic cereal and puts it in the name brand box. Again, dishonest, but also brilliant!

You know how you warn people who are fishing not to scare the fish away? When I was a little kid, I used to talk...a lot. I know, hard to believe. When we were out mushroom hunting, my parents told me I had to be quiet or I would scare the mushrooms away (we seemed to go mushroom hunting a lot, come to think of it).

Here's a good one you can use that I came up with when babysitting my niece when she was about two years old. If she started to cry for really no good reason (which kids do all the time), I would pick her up, then get a surprised look on my face and say something like, "Uh-oh!" She'd immediately stop crying to see what the fuss was about. "I think I saw a mouse!" Then she'd get down and look under the table and around the room to see if she could find the mouse. That worked for about a year before she told me, still in tears, "There's no mouse!"

What do you tell your kids in order to keep them from misbehaving? Or what little lies did you parents tell you in order to keep you in line?