The Bluntness (and Sometimes Honesty) of a 3 Year Old

As we were walking home from the post office yesterday, our daughter asked me a question.

It was one of those near-perfect fall days. The sun was shining bright and the breeze was crisp and cool. Anna was riding her scooter while I carried the packages from the post office. We were ooo-ing and ahhhh-ing at all the old, pretty houses (okay maybe that was just me) when we passed an older man standing outside his house on the phone.

I nodded my head to the man to say hello and he nodded back in the way neighbors do. Once we were passed him and quickly approaching the stop sign, Anna looked up at me from her scooter with a curious look, and asked a very curious question:

“You like people?”

“Do I like people?”

“Yeah, you like people?”

“Well yes, I do like people. Do you?”

“No.”

“What! Why not?”

“I only like them on trick-or-treat.”

I laughed. So hard. She loves Halloween so much, of course she would say something like that. I don’t know if I will ever get used to the bluntness of children, because it catches me off guard every time, like my ears can’t believe what they’re hearing because who would ever say something so honest? So matter-of-fact? Children would. Our children do.

The ironic part of all of this, though, is that for as blunt as she is most of the time, she will just as easily tell a lie to get out of something. Bluntness, I’ve learned, does not mean the same thing as honesty. When she thinks food is gross and doesn’t want it, even though she just begged me for 10 minutes to feed her, she’ll say “I full.” When she doesn’t feel like picking up her toys when we tell her to, she’ll say “I tired” to try and get out of it. When I ask if it was her who ripped the puzzle up, she’ll say no while looking me right in the eye (even though we all know it was).

Her brothers went through the lying phase, too, so I know it’s normal and that she’ll grow out of it. Once the boys learned they will almost always get in less trouble (or no trouble at all!) when they tell the truth, they began to lie less and less until now it’s almost nonexistent (let me think about that a little more before you quote me on it 😂).

So, as is everything when it comes to a 3 year old, there’s a little that makes sense and there’s a lot that doesn’t. Even though we’re two years into this, and even though it feels like we’ve had children forever, we’re still technically “new-ish” parents that, at least for me, are still learning things as we go. I don’t think you ever feel like you know everything as a parent, do you? Even if your kids think you know everything, you still sometimes question and second guess your decisions throughout the day, wondering if what you did or said was the right thing for your family.

But, the more I think about it, I think that’s just called love.