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Lies We Tell
I was inspired by @nickh, who wrote: “Things we tell our kids that are technically true but [are] completely wrong.” Here was his example: “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”
Yup. Words hurt plenty. Here is another one that makes me crazy: You are what you eat.
This stupid mantra is singularly responsible for generations of idiotic diets and health issues. You are not what you eat; your body converts what you eat into other things, so eating cholesterol does not necessarily give you high cholesterol. And besides, my physical body is not what I am. What a stupid and brain-dead idea that is. You are not what you eat: you are what you do.
And another: Life should be fair.
Nope. Not at all. And be thankful for it. Now get to work.
What are your favorite lies that people tell children (and each other)?
Published in General
*Puts down the thesaurus he had been gnawing.*
*Looks around to ensure none were watching.*
If you keep making that face, your face will stick that way.
Wait: is that all wrong? Aren’t smile and frown lines and other creases created in part by smiling and frowning?
I believe that most things about human affairs are number of ideal/real paradoxes.
This won’t hurt.
Or, “This is going to hurt me a lot more than it will hurt you.”
Unquantifiable relative measurement
Which is why it’s a lie.
I’m willing to let that one stand. Your body does do a lot of chemistry – it can rearrange the food molecules and such, but it has to work with the atoms you eat. If you don’t eat any iron, your body is going to suffer for its lack. It doesn’t do alchemy.
And at least as far as rest of us are concerned, once your body’s gone or ceases to function, you are gone. You can’t do anything without it.
@nickh is stealing my lines!
He was saying that was a lie.
I’ve never heard anyone say “Life should be fair.” I thought that was just an implicit belief that children have.
The usual formulation is either, “That’s not fair!” or “It’s not fair!”
Child: “It’s not fair!”
Parent: “Life isn’t fair.”
There you go, you are now ready for parenthood.
I hear this one from “counselors”:
You can trust me.
Nuh-uh. My kids are under strict instructions to NEVER talk to the “counselor” at their high school. Never, ever, never. My kids quite like the freedom to entirely ignore an adult. There is no way that the secular touchy-feely “counselor” whose opening lines are always about trusting him and opening up, etc., can possibly “get” my home-schooled, religious fundamentalist, deeply conservative, self-controlled, highly principled kids. There is no upside.
No, you cannot trust any non-parent adult who says they can be trusted.
One could argue that life is fair. Every cell has a more-or-less equal chance of survival. Differentiation beings to happen when cells congregate into multi-cellular organisms, but that doesn’t disprove life’s fundamental fairness at the cellular level.
;-)
Brilliant!
Yup. There sure are!
Yes! Which is why I wrote on “you can trust me.”
I never tell my kids that. They are MUCH smarter about picking fights than I ever was. If someone offered an argument, I was all over that. Especially if the someone was an authority figure. I burned a lot of bridges! Still do…
Yes. I have relatives who believe everyone needs to learn Coding or some other thing. It is nonsense on stilts.
Violence solves a lot. The threat of violence solves even more. It is at the heart of my highly advanced and sensitive parenting skills. And it really works.
Oh, all right. I was reaching. I imagine that people must say that. But you are right.
I’m not sure about this one. Is it true or a lie?
If you don’t take the time to fix (or do) it right, you’ll make time to fix (or do) it over. i.e. Don’t cut corners.
I’ve seen way too many corners get cut with few or no consequences to the corner cutter to believe this one to be true.
That’s my line!
I like South Park’s take on this one: “There are no stupid questions. Just stupid people.”
Vegetables are good for you.
Nah. Do-gooders just hate plants.
Welll…
Strictly-speaking not everyone needs to learn how to read either, but it’s a dang good skill to have.
Similarly, some basic training in how algorithms work is valuable in all sorts of occupations. Machinists benefit from knowing how to program a CNC machine. Administrative assistants benefit from knowing how to put together a basic spreadsheet, and they really benefit from learning even a little bit of Visual Basic. Anybody that uses a computer can greatly improve their efficiency if they know just enough to throw together simple BAT or BASH scripts, and if you create anything online some basic knowledge of HTML and/or Javascript is definitely beneficial.
In short, not everybody needs a degree in Computer Science, to be sure, but some knowledge of how algorithms work and the basic vocabulary of the most common scripting languages is rapidly becoming as basic an occupational skill as basic literacy and arithmetic are.
Soooo…
The corollary could therefore be, “if you don’t learn x you’d better dang well have a plan in place where x is not a requirement.”
(e.g. I learned some BASIC on my Commodore 64, and I took a high school class in PASCAL. I’ve never since had to program anything in BASIC or PASCAL, but I’m sure those formative experiences have helped me muddle through when I’ve had to throw together scripts in other languages.)
“If you don’t behave, you’re walking home!”
No one buys it.
My mom’s version is better.
“Stupid questions deserve stupid answers.”
We were real popular with teachers, as you might imagine…
I seem to recall my parents putting me out of the vehicle and pull away slowly once or twice. They eventually relented but I wasn’t going to see if they meant it or not.
My kids did. After it happened to them or a sibling.
My problem was with car pool kids misbehaving, but pulling the car over and simply waiting usually worked.