Youthful honesty can be painful for parents

One of the funniest and most terrifying things about small children is that they say what's on their minds and, therefore, completely lack tact.

Most of the time I don't know whether to laugh, cry or hope the ground opens up and swallows me. Reality television shows such as "Kids Say The Darndest Things" have capitalized on the natural humor of children. I've learned the hard way to be careful of what I tell my children unless I want it to come right back at me.

When we moved into our house, I was a little worried that my children would "overstimulate" our neighbors, who were older than us, more cultured and had only one teenage son. I thought it might be a little intimidating for these people to have five children moving in next door, where a vacant lot was for years and years, especially when four of my children were under 5 years old. So, I told my children that the woman next door was a scary witch, and they should never go in her yard and never bother her.

It worked like a charm. They stayed within the boundaries of our yard and respected her privacy. Until one day when I came home from work, and Isaac informed me that our neighbor wasn't a witch. I turned to him and said, "What did you just say?" He promptly repeated, "The lady next door is not a witch. When I was playing, she talked to me, and I told her what you said. She said she wasn't a witch. She was very nice and she's really pretty."

This was not good. I was just getting to know the neighbors, and now I had some explaining to do. This particular neighbor and I are now very good friends. We laugh about this story a lot.

As it turns out, her husband is more of a kid than my children, and my 6-year-old daughter, Maria, has a huge crush on him. My boys love her, and she is my emergency contact if anything happens to me. However, I don't think I'll use that tactic to protect any neighbors from my energetic children in the future.

I think every mother has to go through the pain of being in public and having her child point at someone and make a loud comment that is completely unacceptable. But if I look on the bright side, this is my opportunity to teach my child the fine art of tact and acceptance of all different kinds of people. I must admit I have very low tolerance for laziness, dishonesty, disrespect and a host of other things, but prejudice is not accepted in our house. David asked me if he could marry a black girl. I told him he could marry a purple girl if he loved her. We talked about how every single person in this world is a different color on the outside, but inside we're all the same. His daddy is probably red, and I'm probably yellow. David wanted to know if he was orange then. "Sure."

This does not mean that we do not tease each other. That would be un-American. For example, we like to make fun of my husband, Mike, because he has really skimpy eyebrows, and the rest of us have pretty thick eyebrows. The kids will ask questions like, "Do forks have eyebrows?" We answer, "No." Then, "Does Dad have eyebrows?" We answer, "No." Then obviously Dad must be a fork. Mike is always good-natured about our teasing. One day, he colored his eyebrows in with a marker. He looked kind of like Charlie Chaplin. Of course, Mike refers to the rest of us as the "unibrows."

I was able to use this example when Isaac came home from school because one of the kids called him "Santa Claus." I can certainly think of worse things to call a kid. But I asked him if he had white hair, a beard and a big belly. He said no. Then I asked him if Dad thought he was really a fork because we tease him about his eyebrows. He said no. So, I told him if he didn't care, the boy would stop calling him Santa Claus because that takes all the fun out of teasing someone. I think that worked because I haven't heard any more complaints.

Lisa Brown is a Mount Pleasant working mother of five children ages 6-19. E-mail her at lbrown@postandcourier.com.