Parents Are Sharing The Best Lies They’ve Ever Told Their Kids, And I Legitimately Can’t Stop Laughing

I think at some point in life, we’ve all reflected on the little lies we were told as children that maybe we believed for a bit too long. Honestly, that can be hilarious — and I get why my parents did that.

So, I thought it’d be fun to ask parents in the BuzzFeed Community to share the best, funniest, or most useful lie they’ve ever told their kids — and wow, the amount of responses blew me away! Here are some of the best:

1.“My kids and I would go dragon hunting when they were little. I made a picture book listing markers of a dragon.”

“I don’t really think of it as a lie, I think of it as an imaginative game that we played together to bond. I think they caught on pretty quickly, but they pretended otherwise, so we carried on. They’re grown now, and we all have very fond memories of our adventures together. Zero regrets.”

—acidicduck675

2.“I made Monster Spray with my 4-year-old.”

“Using the Betty Crocker cookbook, simmer fresh herbs in water. Once cooled, strain into a spray bottle.

A spritz in the closet and under the bed kept all the monsters away.”

—poeticdeer621

3.“My eldest son asked me how Santa was going to bring our presents because we didn’t have a chimney. On the fly, I told him Santa has a magic key that opens all doors.”

“Years later, as a preteen, his toddler brother asked him the same question and he said, ‘Well I’ve heard Santa has a magic key that opens all doors.’ Then he looked at me and winked. What a great kid.”

—sleepingfish808

4.“After watching my sister steal my mom’s candy, I was afraid she would constantly be stealing my Raisinets, so I told her they were rabbit pellets. It took her about three years to figure out I would never eat rabbit poop.”

—glitterydragon351

5.“When my boys were little and scared of monsters, I told them that monsters are scared of hamsters and that their pet hamster would keep the monsters away.”

—clumsygiant985

6.“We always called buzzards ‘carnivorous chickens’ as a joke. Our youngest daughter was 14 when she found out they weren’t actually chickens.”

—crunchyfan73

7.“‘If you swallow watermelon seeds, a watermelon will grow in your stomach and you’ll have to have surgery to get it out.'”

—lyndamealer

8.“We live near a state prison. Whenever I’d drive by and my son was with me, he’d ask who goes there. I’d say, ‘Kids who don’t eat their vegetables, kids who don’t brush their teeth, and kids who lie to their parents.’ He did his best not to go there.”

—youngmoon187

9.“When my daughter was around 2 years old, we were in the checkout line at the grocery store, and she asked for candy, and I said, ‘That’s gum. You can’t have gum.'”

“For at least the next three years, if she asked for any type of candy or chocolate at the store, I just had to say that’s gum, and she would say, ‘Oh, I can’t have gum,’ and that would be the end of it.”

—jealouscrab887

10.“I don’t know if it was necessarily useful, but I told my two youngest sons I was 21 years old. Literally every single time they asked me, I was 21.”

Maro L / 500px / Getty Images/500px, NBC / Via giphy.com

“I didn’t realize that the youngest (who was maybe 11 years old at the time) believed me until we were decorating for Dad’s 40th Birthday with big number balloons, and he suddenly stopped what he was doing and had this wide-eyed blank expression on his face…

He said, ‘Mommy, I know math is hard and all, but I was just thinking about how if Daddy is 40, but you are 21 and I’m 12, that would make you…my age!?!? When I was born?!?!’

We had to stop and have a pretty serious/funny series of Q&A and discussions.”

—moi_will_i_ams

11.“I told my youngest two that the reason we didn’t have cable was because I was allergic to it. They survived childhood by watching PBS and playing outside.”

—pmsprincess

12.“We told our kiddo that his ears turn red when he lies. Now he tries to cover them so we don’t see. Best lie detector ever!”

—surprisedsundae11

13.“Every time I don’t want my kids to do something when I’m not around I say the truth bird is here, and watching to tell me the truth. They’ve never acted up!”

—uniquemoon152

14.“I told them that the vanilla yogurt I was feeding him was vanilla ice cream.”

—pinkhero568

15.“I was at the receiving end of this, but when I was little, I saw my mom cutting up a really big piece of meat, and I said, ‘What’s that?’ and she said, ‘This is pterodactyl.’ I believed I’d eaten an extinct dinosaur for quite a while.”

—fierceminion141

16.“When my daughter was young, I didn’t want her to think Santa watched kids in December to see who was naughty or nice…”

“…So I came up with end-of-month reports that Santa would receive from parents throughout the year.

Yes, from January through November, I would ‘send’ a letter to Santa in the North Pole to update him on how good she’d been. My daughter would go to bed without a fuss those nights, and once a month I got a little movie night to myself.

She’s in college now and still on the nice list.”

—freshpony944

17.“I told my little niece that the motion detector in the corner of the room was Santa Claus keeping an eye on their behavior, and every time the red dot appeared, that was Rudolph peeking in to check that they weren’t being naughty.”

“It worked for about a year until my brother (their father) spoiled it.”

—fuelmyfire

18.“My young daughter’s fish died, and I flushed it down the toilet. She wanted to know where I buried it, and I panicked. I told her I buried it in the flower bed out front.”

“So THEN she goes out to dig it up for who knows what reason, and I just let her. After about an hour I suggested that maybe the fishy had already gone to heaven. She was cool with that.”

—lazyship597

19.“I told them the ice cream truck only plays music when it’s empty and the grocery cart’s wheels automatically stop when a kid climbs on it.”

—Hippyindisguise75

20.“I told my 4-year-old that Bambi’s mother had just stayed behind in the field, and we never spoke of it again.”

Disney / RKO Pictures / Via RKO Pictures

—lazyship597

21.“‘Mommy magic’ and ‘mommy moon dust’ are my secret weapons. Ever since she was really little, if my daughter fell or got hurt, I’d tell her I’d give her ‘mommy magic’ to fix it.”

“I rub my hands together and blow on them and then wiggle them at her or lightly tickle her. Works every time (still!) and she’s 10 now.

Similarly, ‘mommy moon dust’ is a little more fancy, but for bedtime when she can’t sleep. I rub my hands and act like I’m sprinkling it on her eyelids.”

—Frickinbatsss

22.“I tell them if they lie to me their eyes change color.”

—kyleott90125

23.“After having listened to Raffi on repeat for WEEKS, I told them that Raffi was on tour so he was playing concerts in places other than our car stereo, and they’d have to wait until he was finished touring before they would hear him again.”

—jessicam4f5363e40

24.“Not me, but my friend. She and her brother are Japanese on their dad’s side of the family and she has been to Japan before to visit relatives. Once, when she came back, she told her little brother that Pokémon are actually real and they exist in zoos in Japan and that she’d seen them.”

“Her brother believed this for most of his life.”

—c4fb4c9fc0

25.“A classic: it is illegal to drive with the car’s interior lights on.”

—moderngoblin805

26.“My son lost one of his first teeth at school. I wasn’t prepared with cash ‘from the tooth fairy.'”

“He’s part of the after-school care program, so I pick him up around 5:00-5:30 p.m., which leaves no time to run around getting money. And since we’re Canadian, we don’t have any bills smaller than $5.

My excuse for having to postpone the tooth drop was, ‘Any teeth reported fallen out to the tooth fairy after 5:00 p.m. have to wait until the next day.’ Worked great.”

—hiddensunflower20

27.“The Crying Doctor. When my son was a toddler, he would cry for various reasons (basic kid stuff), and I told him about the Crying Doctor, who made house calls and was only a phone call away.”

“This ‘doctor’ had a special shot that would stop his crying. I would pretend to talk to someone on the phone, say his name, and give our location. He would instantly stop crying every time.

When he got older, he asked me if it was real and I told him the truth. I’ve used it on random kids and it always seems to work. I’ll tell parents that I have the number, and the kids go quiet listening to what the ‘doctor’ does.”

—officialasteroid26

28.“My mom told me that the crisps they sold outside of the school were made using motor oil. I have never in my life tasted one. I’m 55.”

—currywurst8

29.And finally: “I bought a smoke detector and painted it, then wrote ‘Monster Detector’ on it. Told her if there were any monsters in the house, the alarm would go off and I would get rid of them.”

—bravehawk837

How cute. I want to hear all your thoughts in the comments below! Feel free to share your own ‘lie’ stories, as well. I love reading them.

Or, if you want to share but prefer to stay anonymous, feel free to write in to this anonymous Google form. Who knows — your answer may be included in an upcoming BuzzFeed article!

Note: some comments have been edited for length and/or clarity.