mind body mama: Sneaking Around

Over the last few months Small went through a sneaking phase. Sweetiebabyhoneylicious and I are assiduous parents but we are distracted enough that the evidence of this sneaking escaped us entirely. What we couldn’t ignore was the guilt and remorse that dogged Small, finally catching her in a cascade of tearful confessions.

The night that the dam of deception broke Sweetie and I were sitting together on the sofa watching TV after Small’s bedtime—a rare moment of calm for us. Small came halfway down the stairs calling for me. “I have to talk to Mama!” she cried in a voice edged with panic. I lifted an eyebrow at Sweetie that said, “What fresh hell is this at 10 o’clock at night?”

Small was coming clean about the first—and most egregious—episode of sneaking. Hiccupping through her tears she choked out the story: During the time of the school book fair, she and I had strategized which books she would purchase. She was using her own piggy-bank money but I supervised because the book sale sells a whole lot of crap. (It pisses me off that the school endorses selling made-in-China plastic crap and third-rate comics passed off as “graphic novels,” but that’s another rant entirely.) Given that Small can tear through, say, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in a day or two, it’s important to me that the books we purchase be complex enough to sustain her interest for more than one read.

During the first pass at the book sale Small had selected a Pokémon reference guide that has become her constant companion. The sale was “buy one, get one” so she selected a graphic novel about mean girls as her second choice. I wasn’t thrilled by that but I made my peace with it.

What I didn’t know—what I learned through her tears and terror—was that the next day she snuck money out of her piggy bank and went back to the book sale where she bought two Disney easy readers. The covers said something about fairies and adventure, words that sing a siren song to my little girl.

I did not know that the coming days and weeks would bring a torrent of confessions. Not only had she purchased more books, she also bought specifically forbidden tchotchkes. She snuck money out of her piggy bank to buy popsicles at snack recess. She took the fourth Harry Potter out of the school library and read it during class time, even though I had told her not to read past book three. (The challenge of the advanced grade-school reader is matching ability to appropriate content; we thought the book might be too scary for her.)

All of this was ahead of us that first night. We sat together in her dark bed and I watched her weep, her little body shaking with regret and terror. Her relief at coming clean was tempered by her terror that I was going to yell at her.

But I had a bigger fear: the fear that my kid could be afraid to tell me something, anything. A bedrock of our safety plan is that we don’t keep secrets in our family. Of course there are topics of conversation which are appropriate for the adults; there are periods when any of us are preparing surprises for any others. But we cannot be compelled to keep information from each other.

This is central to my kid’s safety because it means that she can tell me if someone threatens her. I don’t know if this mantra—we don’t keep secrets in our family—would hold up in the scariest of circumstances, if a child predator attempted to groom or abuse her. I do know we’ve invoked it when Small’s relationship with a friend of the family entered grey area: Small attempting to manipulate her target into gifts or snacks beyond the family norm. Some sneaking happened there too, whereby Small didn’t want us to know when she’d scored treats. The grown-ups closed ranks to shut that down right away. We don’t keep secrets in our family. And also, if grown-ups are safe they will always tell your parents what is going on; they will always abide by family rules. This is the way we tell if a grown-up is safe.

I was mad. Over the coming weeks I grew more grim and disappointed. But I never yelled. That tragic night, I pointed out how awful Small felt and suggested the easy way to avoid feeling this way in the future: Don’t sneak. Small saw the wisdom and eventually the humor in this. We agreed she would forfeit the contraband, deposit her piggy bank money into a bank account, and perform some yard work without pay. But mostly I intoned our mantra, hoping that the emotion of the moment would help it marinate deep into her psyche: We don’t keep secrets in our family.