When children are between the ages of two to four, they begin to lie. It isn’t malicious, and I’m sure they don’t see any harm in it. But questions like, “Did you eat the cookie?” or “Did you paint the cat?” are invariably met with an angel-faced denial, while the evidence strongly points to their guilt.
Carson, our first child, was an early bloomer who began lying at the age of 2. It was during this time of inept fibbing that my husband told our daughter, “Oh, I know you’re lying. Your dot is showing.” At her confusion (and mine) he explained. “When you lie, a purple dot shows up on your forehead. Any time you tell a lie your mother and I will know, because of the dot.” Honestly, it was hard to keep a straight face.
For the next few weeks, she experimented with telling us lies, childish lies that we could easily detect. It seemed to her young mind that yes, a dot must appear on her forehead whenever she lied. How else did mommy and daddy know? She’d run to the mirror after a lie to try and see the dot, but my husband had a ready excuse. “No child can see their own dot, only the grown-ups can see it. It’s part of being an adult, the ability to see the purple dot.”
I don’t know when the purple dot stopped working, but to this day, she is a horrible liar. For years and years, we would always know when she was lying, because she would put her hand to her forehead before speaking. We teasingly asked why she was covering her forehead. At which point she’d drop her hand in exasperation and we’d laughingly say, “Your dot is showing.”
My only regret is that we didn’t continue the purple dot strategy with our other two children. Because, unfortunately, Cole is an exceptional liar.
Rebecca Lamprey 