[zB2sj38WHAjYnvm]

My parents told me something very similar about gum, and a whole lot of other weird things over the years. Is this a universal experience? I wonder if it's a helpful evolutionary trait, sort of like training your "mental immune system" the same way that your mother chewing your food and feeding it to you, germs and all, strengthens your actual immune system.

[endtime]

My eight-year-olds have gotten quite good at detecting when I'm pulling their legs. I never deceive them about anything serious, but I want them to learn to think critically about what authority figures tell them. My five-year-old is thoroughly convinced I can read his mind by putting my nose to his ear and smelling his brain; I established credibility when I was confident I knew what he was thinking. It works great for "I'm not tired" when he clearly is, or "my tummy is full" after two bites of food. Also, if he eats his eggs, at bedtime he will be strong enough to win a wrestling match with me.

I also enjoy planting small "easter eggs" for them...e.g. whenever we drive through the Holland Tunnel I hum the Super Mario underground theme, which I have explained simply as "tunnel music". One day they'll get it.

[TeMPOraL]

Not sure how helpful it is. I wasn't told much lies as a kid. Plenty of wrong things, yes, but those were all common misconceptions (some still widely held by people today, plenty of them present on this Wikipedia list[0]).

Someone close to me, however, was told a lot of such lies in their childhood, and continued to believe them into adulthood. When we met during our university years, I unknowingly debunked a few of those stories during casual conversations, and the person later thanked me and told me that, sadly, this completely shattered the trust they had for their father.

----

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

[salawat]

If you get in contact with your friend: point out to them that part of being a parent is building up an independent, bullshit tolerant, reality questioning adult.

If none of the things you debunked were serious, then it may have been seed planting for later epiphanies.

I've made very sure that the kiddos I spend time with have a rich mix of truths, half-truths, and jolly equivocations to sort through in their life, and they have no end of fun working their way to proving me wrong.

I consider this an investment in their future development of bullshit filters to keep things running when mine have finally given up the ghost (May it not happen in the forseeable future).

[TedDoesntTalk]

> this completely shattered the trust they had for their father.

Friend of mine felt this way when he learned the truth about Santa Claus. No joke.

[hamburglar]

I’d tell my kids a lot fewer lies if they actually fell for them. Half the fun (and the entire point) is watching them get a more and more sophisticated nose for bullshit.

[wruza]

Yes, it is universal, at least in my circle. I think it’s not a trait, but simply our evolutional tolerance to stupid things parents say when it comes to parenting or to just being reasonable. You don’t die from not swallowing a gum, avoiding black cats or praying to invisible dude. So these things can live ages.

Only to my 30s I began to realize how much of this non-contextual nonsense was put in my mind, from gums to proverbs to rules to… basically everything was a subject for reevaluation.

[jojobas]

What's the stimulus and response if you tell your kid a joke/lie and never let him figure out it was a joke?

The correct way would be to intermingle jokes with truths and telling/laughing some time after they swallow the lies they should have doubted.

My kids seem to doubt everything they hear (pain in the bum for teachers), yet almost religiously believe everything I've told "for real".

[denton-scratch]

> Is this a universal experience?

What, being spun some BS by your parents?

My mother told me that picking my nose would result in my nose becoming like a cow's nose. She was right; my face is now indistinguishable from a cow's.

[danuker]

> your mother chewing your food and feeding it to you, germs and all, strengthens your actual immune system.

[citation needed]

[rsynnott]

The comment you're replying to was obviously written by a bird.

[soco]

First hand account here from back in the 80s of grandmas chewing adult food for babies. No they were not birds but humans, all of them. Make what you want with this information.

[robocat]

I read a comment recently by a person born in an Asian country, where it was normal for babies or children to be fed by their parents “pre-masticated”. Makes complete sense to me. You might also do it for someone who was ill.

They mentioned that getting fed food was something they still occasionally did, that it was a supremely intimate thing to do.

[danuker]

Do birds chew gum?

[nmridul]

The "bird" didn't mention chewing gum.. They take plastic, so possible they can also take gums..

https://www.blastic.eu/knowledge-bank/impacts/plastic-ingest...

[implements]

It's bad enough when they spit on a hanky and wipe your face with it!

[numeromancer]

Civilized mothers use covfefe.