I’m asking myself why you, both of you, experience as a tragedy the fact that your son isn’t always faithful to the truth?
What do you mean? What if his sister learns from him? What if we all start lying? What would life in our home be like? There’s a kind of contract between people in the world that they will try—they don’t always succeed, but they try—to tell the truth. Our ability to trust each other is built on that foundation. If you pull that card out, the entire tower falls.
I understand. If that’s the situation, I have to ask you if the tendency to lie…has appeared in the family before.
What? No. Of course not.
Why are you smiling, Dikla?
Because it’s amusing how a person who likes to think he’s self-aware can be so totally clueless about himself.
Meaning?
My husband is a writer. So when it comes to everything related to habitual lying—
Hold on, Diki, that’s not fair—
You’re addicted. You think of your life as a story. You think of me as a story. A character in a story. Once, your words had value. Today, they have as much value as Yoram Sirkin’s words.
That’s enough.
But it’s true.
Your truth…
The objecti—
I’m stopping you for a moment. Even though I am getting the impression that there is definitely room here…for couples therapy. But this is neither the time nor the place. And also…the price is different. Therefore, I suggest that we go back to focusing on Yanai. I’d like to know, Dikla, if Yanai already reads books on his own.
The child is a bookworm. Since he learned to read, he finishes two or three books a day. And add to that the stories his father tells him.
How many stories a day do you tell Yanai?
Let’s see. There’s the waking-up story. Otherwise he can’t wake up. There’s the daily toothbrush story. I mean, the toothbrush is a kind of creature that talks to Yanai. Then, in the car on the way to school, instead of playing a boring CD of children’s songs, I tell him another story. But a short one. And another very short one on the way home from school. Then, in the early evening, there’s a hammock story.
Hammock story?
We both lie in a hammock and look at the clouds. He tells me what shapes he sees, and together we make up a story based on them. Then supper, a bath, and a bedtime story.
And that’s it?
The truth is that there’s also “Where Is Mr. Marshmallow.”
Mr. Marshmallow?
It’s not really a story, more like a musical detective rhyme. Right before he falls asleep. We’re walking down the street. The light is yellow. There’s no time to think. Where oh where is Mr. Marshmallow?
I understand.
In the end, the kid in the story—excuse me, the musical—always finds Mr. Marshmallow, and then I pretend to eat him. Yanai, I mean. And he giggles hysterically. He’s crazy about it.
So altogether—correct me if I’m wrong—you tell him seven stories a day.
The hammock song is only in the summer.
That’s all he does with him, do you see?
That’s not true, Dikla. And it’s not fair. We also go to the supermarket together on Fridays.
When you tell him a story about the little pepper that lives inside the big pepper.
If I don’t, he gets bored and drives me nuts. It doesn’t count.
I ask myself—
Tell me, why do psychologists always “ask themselves”? After all, you ask us, not yourself. Why skirt around it? And what is that saxophone in the background? Your neighbors? Aren’t they going a little over the top with the volume?
I wonder…Look, on the one hand, the picture you describe is heartwarming. It seems that you and Yanai have a lively and…creative bond. On the other hand, you can’t dismiss out of hand the possibility that there is a line that joins the abnormal number of stories the child is exposed to and his tendency to offer his own subjective interpretations of the variegated aspects of reality.
Can you repeat that in people speak?
She’s just telling you what I tell you all the time. That seven stories a day—
Six, in winter. One is only a rhymed musical detective story, so—
Five and a rhymed musical detective story—is too many. Yanai can’t tell the difference between truth and fiction anymore.
Am I to blame for that too, Dikla?
It’s not a question of blame.
Yes it is.
It’s—
I’m stopping you. Look, I still need to meet with Yanai in order to verify my gut feeling, but it may very well be that what you call lies are, for him, only small stories. He takes pleasure in inventing those stories and in the fact that they allow him to effectuate an independent inner world—
You know, it sounds kind of cute when you say it. “Small stories.” “An independent inner world.” But it’s not. It’s not cute. It’s worrying. The boy is already seven years old.
What exactly is worrying you? In developmental terms, it’s still age-appropriate.
What do you mean, what’s worrying me?
Look here. I realize that you’re both in distress, and I’m not taking that lightly. I merely want us to be precise about the essence of that distress. What exactly is it that worries you?
We’re not preparing him for the world. In the end, his lying will get him in trouble. Children will see that he’s lying. Teachers will stop thinking it’s charming. I want to spare him the humiliation.
And how…do you see it, Dikla?
I don’t know. I think about it a lot. If we’re seriously considering Yoram Sirkin as a candidate for prime minister—that says it all. Maybe there is no more reality. Just Photoshop. And maybe, in an upside-down kind of way, we’re preparing our son extremely well for the true reality of life. Because apparently only liars can survive in a fake world and in a country where you can’t believe what anyone says about anything. But then again, speaking as a mother, daily life becomes very difficult when you can’t trust your own child. When you need to be suspicious of everything he says.
I can
