House of lies: Is fibbing to your kids ever OK?

Honesty may be the best policy, but it's not always practical, experts say On a recent shopping trip to Marshalls, Colleen Weston decided to skip the parenting advice about teaching kids life lessons at every opportunity. Instead of explaining to her son why he couldn’t have a toy that day, which surely would have triggered a tantrum, she took the easy way out: She lied. “My son, who’s 3, started to fuss about wanting a toy, some gladiator or Transformers man I wasn't going to waste my money on,” Weston, 35, a Middletown, Conn., mother of two, recalls. “I told him, ‘That’s for 8-year-olds. The checkout clerk won't allow you to have it. You're too young.’” In effect, she told her tot that he’d be carded at the toy counter — and he believed it. “Weak, I know,” says Weston. “But we got out of Marshalls with only what we needed... [read full story]