Telling white lies to get out of trouble is something most children will do at some point – and many parents will have to sit their kids down and tell them the importance of being honest.
But one mum has claimed she was so hurt by her daughter lying to her as a child that she “still has trouble trusting her” now that she’s 15.
Posting on Reddit, the mum explained she wanted her daughter to help her with housework, but she claimed she had hurt her knee – which her mum thought was a lie.
She wrote: “I have a 15-year-old daughter and my husband is currently out of town. I have a lot of projects that need to be done in my yard, and I really needed her help.
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“On Friday, she told me her knee was hurting after her run, and she was limping. I told her ‘It’s funny how your body always seems to malfunction when I need your help. You can just stay in bed all day if you want’ — because it’s true.
“She has a history of feigning ailments in order to get out of things she doesn’t want to do. She hasn’t done it much since she was around nine, but I still have trouble trusting her when she says something is wrong.”
The woman’s daughter agreed to help despite her injury, and while the mum was expecting the teen to “magically be better” afterwards, her knee still hurt the next day – and she was rushed to hospital.
She added: “She said she would help me, and I told her we could take her to the emergency room if her knee still hurt by the time the yard work was done.
“We worked the whole weekend, and she complained a lot, but I was almost certain that she would magically be better by the end of the weekend.
“This morning though, she said her knee was hurting badly and she could hardly walk … so I took her to the emergency room. It turns out she sprained her knee.”
The mum then tried to get her daughter to tell the doctors it had only started hurting that day, but she told them the truth about working all weekend on her injured knee.
And what’s more, the mum doesn’t want to apologise to her daughter – because she still thinks it’s her fault for lying as a child.
She said: “I had told her to tell them that it only started hurting today, but she said it started hurting Friday, and I was questioned. Fortunately, nothing bad happened, but they said that due to how much she’s had to use her knee after it was injured, it will take longer to recover.
“I do feel slightly guilty, but I told her that this wouldn’t have gotten to the point it did, had she not had this history of lying. She is angry at me; she told me that she was in terrible pain all weekend, and that she couldn’t believe I didn’t trust her.
“She doesn’t seem very interested in talking to me, but I feel like this is partially her fault for creating a situation in which I couldn’t trust her.”
And commenters on Reddit can’t believe the mum would ignore her daughter’s injuries – or tell her to lie to her doctor after holding a grudge toward her for lying as a child.
One person said: “You don't trust her due to a history of lying, but then you turn around and command her to lie? Sounds like hypocrisy.”
And another added: “You basically punished her for lies she told when she was nine. I hope she tells everyone how you ignored her pain.”
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