kids lie

Criminal Minds: When Kids Lie

Do your kids lie, or is it just mine? Do they lie about the most ridiculous stuff? We have spent the better part of three days looking for Devlin’s yellow smiley-faced retainer. About a week ago, with the arrival of the twins’ respective retainers, we entered the world of having three children in orthadonture.

Dot: You soak his thumb in iodine and you might get by without the orthodonture, but it won’t knock a thing off the university. 
Devlin was understandably a little unnerved with the contraption and had no appreciation for its cost. All he knew was that it was contraband he needed to unload like ditching a murder weapon in an obscure dumpster. (BTW, There’s an app for that. Click here.) He bit down on it with the wrong placement so we had to return to the Orthodontist within two days to have it readjusted. We made wearing his retainer a precursor to playing Wii. He clearly didn’t like the thing, despite it being molded in his favorite color. We were making progress. That is, until I didn’t find the infernal apparatus in his retainer case. Why don’t they design expensive retainers with a GPS tracking device?

Devlin fessed-up relatively quickly that he’d hidden it but “didn’t remember where he put it.” “Somewhere on the second floor.” “Or somewhere in the kitchen or living room.” “Maybe in the bathroom.” He was steadfast that he hadn’t thrown it in the trash or the toilet. I found my best Criminal Minds flashlight, got down on my hands and knees and tried to use my maternal profiler skills to analyze what an autistic mind would do with something he didn’t like. We conducted an all-family search. In fairness, the Orthodontist did question me about whether I really wanted to try the retainer with Devlin. My approach with Dev has always been to err on the side of trying things instead of avoiding them because it might be hard. So it was that I found myself looking inside the toilet tank for his retainer. We looked in all the toy bins, inside his bedding and pillows, inside band-aid boxes, the dishwasher. His favorite box of cereal. No love. In the meantime, Devlin was denied access to all electronics until we found the retainer. Day Two into Operation Retainer Rescue, after intense scrutiny and under the glare of interrogation lights, the Unsub finally confessed that he had flushed the smiley retainer down the toilet. Fuck balls!Absurdly, this is sort of progress. First of all, lying is a skill, and though not the one you want to nurture in your child, you at least want them to know what it is so you at least have a platform to discuss it. Also, Devlin is problem-solving and thinking of solutions (albeit final, and mafia-style) and literally making them go away. If he’s developing skills to be a criminal, please let him be good at it.

Dot: You gotta get ’em dip-tet boosters yearly or else they’ll develop lockjaw and night vision. 
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