TACKY. That's all there is to say about this. As well as, you know, setting a bad example for the kiddies.

Terrible parenting. She advocates lying and dodging responsibility. The few bucks saved now are meaningless when your child grows up with poor morals.

You're teaching your kid how to be successful in business, especially banking! Good job!

This entire article is troubling. I could see a place accidentally giving you a discount and you just not telling them that you don't qualify. But really...telling your kid to flat-out lie??

I have several friends who are teachers, and all of them are totally against putting fall boys in school early. It tends to carry through more often than with girls, and they end up struggling both socially and academically. There are exceptions, I'm sure, but putting a boy in school a year early is just a BAD IDEA.

When cashiers ask my mother if she is old enough for the senior discount she asks "Do I look old enough?"

She gets bonus points for dodging the question and getting the discount without lying!

As someone who worked in the box office, it was really annoying to see people order kids tickets when jr was way over the age of 12. Get away with it til they're 13, after that when they're towering sorry. Unless they've memorized their fake birthday, they will stumble when I ask them their birthday and catch them in a lie.

And how is teaching kids to lie to save a buck good? Wouldn't they become robber barons or something...I mean all Bernie Madoff did was tell a little white lie....

Epic failure

My mom used to make my sister say she was under 10 to ride the bus for free when we were little.

I'm not sure about the article's author in terms of financial security (it sounds to me like she is at least middle class) but my mom was very poor, worked two jobs, and sent us to live with our dad and see her on weekends since she couldn't afford to see us more.

That said, I do disagree with lies like these. It's still a lie, and it still costs someone somewhere else something. That "free meal" is being subsidized by paying people. That swim club could face serious litigation should something happen to the daughter. Saving a buck here and there could prove to be costly if she gets sued by them for false misrepresentation.

and they question why our jails are so full!

**shakes head** .. tisk tisk!

-dave

No kidding...this is easily one of the worst things you can do for your kids. Teaching them that it's acceptable to lie when you stand to gain from it is a heinous thing to do. You're breeding low-lifes there, momma...

Right. Because teaching children that lying and being deceitful is good surely won't have any negative effects in their future, right?

What's that about breeding ourselves into extinction?

Oh man, let the fur fly...

We won't even let our daughter lie about being six months older to go on certain rides at Lego Land, you need to be 6 to do the large cars by yourself, she won't be 6 until September, she told them and asked if it was OK, they said no so she will have to wait. She was not even interested in lying about it, the thought didn't even cross her mind and I hope to keep it that way.

Kids don't need an excuse to lie at 16.

I'm having a hard enough time doing the Santa Claus/Easter Bunny/Tooth fairy thing with my kid right now because I think it's better to be truthful than not. That said, I don't know anyone with kids who hasn't abused some age-discount policy at least once.

We get this where I volunteer as well - children have to be at least three years old and a parent/guardian has to drop them off. We get lied to on a regular basis, but there are actual reasons for the restrictions:

- The toys we have present choking hazards for children under 3.
- Children under 3 need more attention than children over 3. In most cases it's pretty much 1:1 attention which means that the small staff with your little "white lie" which used to be able to do 4:1 will turn away of-age children to take care of your child.
- If you're willing to lie about the age of your child or the relationship you hold to your child, what are the next rules you're going to break? The one about not leaving the campus while your child is in care? The one about leaving the pager on in case we need you?
- If you're not a legal guardian and something happens that requires medical attention, where are we? You just gave permission you didn't have for strangers to watch a child. And now said child needs medical attention you can't give permission to give if it's not life threatening. Swell.

See - the rules aren't actually arbitrary. People don't really make these things up just to be a PIA to you. And while your precious is a unique and awesome snowflake who is advanced/never going to get hurt/genius/indestructible and you'd never dream of suing!, perhaps it's time to grow up and realize that having children actually requires some work on your part - not just creative lying.

@katstermonster: Aren't fall kids older than spring kids? I was born in November, and was older than the bulk of my cohort in elementary school.

That said, if you look at a chart comparing standardized testing scores to birthday, there is an obvious jump discontinuity on whatever day the school district uses to determine eligibility to enroll in kindergarten(here, August 1st).

About that girl that made herself 6 months older to get into nursery school. When some 25-year old guy has sex with her 6 months before her "real" 18th birthday, I wonder how forgiving her mother will be.

@Stephmo: Good of you to point out that many seemingly-arbitrary rules about things like this are based in legal regulations or safety precautions. As an educator, I give you a thumbs-up.

One time me and my young son were on a plane that got into O'Hare too late to connect to the flight home. We had to get in line to make arrangements to spend the night in Chicago and make the morning flight home. I instructed my son to grab my sleeve and say "Daddy I'm hungry" when we got to the front of the line. We ended up with about $50 in food vouchers and a hotel room for the night.

@Stephmo: "Children under 3 need more attention than children over 3."

You're so right. I used to teach martial arts, and I was shocked when I switched from teaching 4-5 year olds to teaching 2-3 year olds. Different cutoff, but I swear in that age range, the maturity and abilities increase exponentially. A year makes a HUGE difference, and people just don't get that.

@katstermonster: Though it is slightly unrelated to the point of the story I agree with you about fall bday boys starting school too early.

My daughter just finished two years of preschool and one year of kindergarten, throughout the last three years almost all of the kids with behavior issue were boys who were too young. My wife also know several educators and they seem to all agree on this point as well.

Thankfully my daughter has a fall birthday and our son has a spring birthday.

@BWoodle: Depends on your definition of lying. Is not disclosing the truth (or only inferring a lie) when you know full well not disclosing it will lead the person asking to the wrong conclusion considered lying?

@zeroraveson: Fall kids are older than spring kids IF you start them a year "late". If your kid is born in September - November or so, a lot of school systems will let them start kindergarten when they're about to turn 5. I'm advocating not starting them (at least the boys) until they're about to turn 6.

My mom made me do this at ammusement parks until i was almost 14 and way too old to pass as a kid under 12... I'm 28 and I still try to pass off as a 21 year old college student at the movies though.

@zeroraveson: And that discontinuity is exactly right. At that age, a few months makes a HUGE difference in development and whatnot.

@zeroraveson: That's because your parents didn't put you in early like @katstermonster: was talking about. I was a fall kid, and I was one of the older, but I had friends my grade who were a full year younger than me. The age difference did show sometimes. Kinda sucks, with a fall b-day you have to choose to be either on of the oldest or one of the youngest, no in between.

Indeed, tacky and low life. What if the kid drowns and dies at the pool?

And the mother tries to sue the pool? nope, sorry you lied idiot woman.

These parents will be paid back for this sort of thing before anyone else does.

@militarydave: I disagree, this is the beginning stages of the lying on tax returns and mortgage application crime which is a small percentage of the prison population and largely socially acceptable.

@K-Bo: It helps once you're turning 21...I'm a May birthday, and I was still one of my last friends to turn 21. Nice, because they could buy me booze, crappy, because I couldn't go out to bars with them.

Funny how she manages to miss things that would make her pay more.

Terrible parenting! But isn't it really confusing for the kids as well, when they learn about ethics and what not to do, and how lying is bad, and they blurt out that mom and dad do it all the time? It looks bad for everyone because kids, by nature of not understanding how to keep secrets, will spill the beans on nearly everything. They're innocent, for the most part. Keep it that way for a while longer before they realize that sometimes the world isn't such a nice place.

@zeroraveson: i think it's the border cases....some states say 5 by sept 1, some say 5 by dec 31 to start kindergarten. If you're in a dec 31 state, the spring kids will be older than the fall kids. My cousin was in a sept 1 state, and she's sept 9. So she's one of the oldest kids in her class.

I know a few people in HS who were born in fall 84 and not fall 83-spring/summer 84. I was eligible to start kindergarten in 1988 bc I would have been 5 by dec 31 (the date in the town in CT), but my mom was against it. It meant I would have been going to college as a 17 yr old, and returning from 1st semester still 17.

@futuresuperbowlMVPJayCutler: *by that I mean MORE socially acceptable than drug crimes or theft.

@jscott73: Yeah, I've seen it all over the place. My mom managed to have us all in the Spring, and she still wishes she had started my middle brother (a mid-June baby) a year later.

That is an amazing picture, though.

Jail time for the mom please.

@cortana: Or a politician.

@futuresuperbowlMVPJayCutler: Waaait a minute. So I'm not supposed to be making meth in my bathroom? I was declaring it on my tax returns and everything!

@PunditGuy: That brings up an interesting question. At what age is Santa/Easter bunny/tooth fairy no longer truth, but actually a lie (which is the truth)? What age is appropriate to break the news?

It's one thing to have bent the rules once or twice in your lifetime. We all have. But it's a totally other thing to make it so common that you think it's acceptable.

@katstermonster: Yeah, I was born in early September, and my parents started me a year "late". I think it ended up being a good thing, and it had the bonus that I could legally drink for two full years of college.

@floraposte: Yeah, I really like that wallpaper.

@HiPwr: Or a car salesman.

@PunditGuy: A bit of dialogue that came to mind, from Terry Pratchett's Hogfather:

Death: Humans need fantasy to *be* human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
Susan: With tooth fairies? Hogfathers?
Death: Yes. As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies.
Susan: So we can believe the big ones?
Death: Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.
Susan: They're not the same at all.
Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder, and sieve it through the finest sieve, and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet, you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some, some rightness in the universe, by which it may be judged.
Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what's the point?
Death: You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?

@pecan 3.14159265: i didn'tever get the santa isn't real conversation...i think i just figured it out. when i saw presents in my mom's closet that ended up in our stocking. and the tooth fairy thing sort of solves itself when the fairy never came when you didn't tell your parents you lost a tooth.

hopefully there isn't some young child out there reading this blog, i don't want to ruin the fantasy for them

@sponica: Most school systems allow a gray area where the people get to choose. Being born in September and October, my brother and I fell into the gray area for our state. Caused my mom a lot of gray hairs as she weighed the pluses and minuses for each of us.

@pax: I've got no issue whatsoever with thriftiness, but this is my definition of being a cheapskate. Reminds me of old ladies who stuff rolls in their purse to take home at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

@johnva: I was one who started late, I was the first to start driving, drinking, ect. I enjoyed it.

@pecan 3.14159265: There are other complications too, since if you tell your Jimmy that Santa's a fraud, the next day his entire class will find out. Expect many tears and bitter recriminations, and that's only from the other parents.
That's why I'll wait until my loin-spawn are in middle school before breaking the news to them.

Doctoring a birth certificate? That's kind of a big deal.