Fibbing by omission

My children hated stew. In the end I renamed it country beef. After a couple of mouthfuls they both shouted It's Stew!
Forty years on they still remind me of it.

Callistemon21

When our children were small, sprouts were known as fairy cabbages.
One unenthusiastic DC said "Well, the fairies can come and eat all mine".

I'm sitting in Marks and Spencer's cafe in Oxford having a coffee. Just read your post about the fairies. Laughed out loud. I think the people sitting nearby are wondering about me!!

I believe fibbing by omission only has a place to play regarding gifts or intended pleasant surprises.
In all other situations, it is simply being devious-in some, life shattering.
My Mother abandoned our family when I was barely seven. Many years later, when I had my first child-I reconnected with her. Unknown to me, she and my MiL had formed a friendship with the main intention of my mother lying about me. This created a tension with my MiL, of whom I was fond, and I never understood why. I now see that there were plenty of occasions that lying by omission took place. The relationship with my Mother collapsed when my children were small but her friendship with my MiL continued until eventually, I was told by a stranger that my mother had died. I then learned my MiL had been in touch regularly with my mother for 24 years, attended parties and was even given furniture by her. MiL knew that my mother had died six months before I knew so both my sister and I, could not even find closure by attending her funeral. The saddest part of it was my MiL had told my mother that my sister was suffering from cancer and not even then did she have the parental instincts to reach out. So in that instance, lying by omission caused the most dreadful pain. My husband point blank refuses to talk with his mother now as he does not have any trust, this too has had an impact.

Not a fib, but the comments about garlic have really made me smile. My youngest stepson loves my cooking and always polishes off everything I make. He told me the other day that he “doesn’t like garlic”. I nearly fell over laughing as garlic features heavily in just about every meal. What you don’t know won’t hurt you eh? 😂

sunglow12

I scratched our brand bee red gates in France with my car so later in the day when we went to a French Liddel in Gueret I bought some bright red nail Polish and touched it up . Still got the Polish just in case and my dear , now deceased friend told on me ! 😀I was going to forget to tell my husband what happened otherwise

That has reminded me of a naughty one I did when DD was small. She was talking to me whilst I cleaned the toilet, put the bleach down, and bleached the brown and black speckled carpet. I told her to go and get her felt tips and we spent the afternoon putting black and brown spots and smudges on the carpet, I owned up when we were moving house.
Another time I tore the wallpaper and with Dd's Pritt stick, and the help of a friend I managed to push the paper back into place and told her it was a big girl's secret and to tell no one. One secret too many she told DH that mummy and aunty... had torn the wallpaper.

I scratched our brand bee red gates in France with my car so later in the day when we went to a French Liddel in Gueret I bought some bright red nail Polish and touched it up . Still got the Polish just in case and my dear , now deceased friend told on me ! 😀I was going to forget to tell my husband what happened otherwise

I make a halloumi & spinach curry sometimes & tell DH it's cheese & onion casserole (well, it does have both in it!). It's not his favourite but he eats it happily enough.
Because he doesn't think he likes anything with pulses or spinach in, we sometimes have a "renaming" competition at work, giving my new recipes a husband -friendly name.

When our children were small, sprouts were known as fairy cabbages.
One unenthusiastic DC said "Well, the fairies can come and eat all mine".

As an Infants teacher and at home I had a tube of fairy cream for grazes. I washed the graze and applied Savalon cream. Then we were banned but the fairies still came to our house.
When the children cried when Nitty Nora came to inspect I told the upset ones she was looking to see what kind of shampoo they used.

M&S tinned chunky steak in gravy in a tin used to be very good years ago!
I haven't eaten it for a long time.

My late husband loved steak pie which I made using a tin of Marks and Spencer chunky steak. He thought I made the pies from scratch using fresh stewing steak. One day he found the empty tin in the rubbish bin and refused to eat my steak pie after that.
My dad wouldn't eat quiche Lorraine but would happily tuck into it as long as I remembered to call it cheese and bacon pie.

Fairycakes

Swapping regular ketchup for low salt and sugar, which I pour into the regular ketchup bottle so as hubby doesn't know. He has high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

Now that he's accepted it I think you should do a "taste test" with the (fake) low sugar version and a new liw sugar bottle. If he now agrees he can't tell the difference it saves a lot of messy decanting!

To get DD2 to eat greens I called broccoli baby green flowers she ate them as fast as she could.
I had or still have a way of getting rid of Dh's old clothes, I batch wash them so he does not know what exactly and they get lost in the airing cupboard where he never goes. Then I sneak them to the recycling.
When DD2 was small she had a Fisher price Jack in the Box that made an awful noise, it disappeared into a cupboard and was donated to the School toy sale. Every year she bought it back and I did not tell her it was ours.

On a trip to France we called in a restaurant in Calais on the way home. As we entered my husband was looking at what a few of the locals wer eating. When the waitress appeared he pointed to a nearby table and insisted that he wanted what they were having. The waitress asked, in french, if he knew what it was and I told her no but to give him what he wanted. I did not tell him it was horsemeat steak for a few days.......

KathrynP

I used to accompany disabled children on skiing holidays in Italy and at dinner we’d choose our meal for the next day. One mother warned me her 9 yr old son would only ate chicken so that week he ate ‘chicken beef’ , ‘chicken pork’, and ‘chicken lamb’ and scoffed the lot. Mum was surprised.

Similar situation to my friend, whose son only wanted to eat eggs when he was small. She’d give him ham, beef, chicken or pork and call it ‘egg meat’ then he’d eat the lot.

I had a new-to-me car in a beautiful metallic red, but had somehow managed to collect a scrape of green paint low down on one door the first week I had it. The car was due back at the garage for a small adjustment shortly after that, and I had meant to ask how much it would be to get the scrape removed but forgot. When I collected it, the scrape was gone, nothing was said by the garage and I suspect they thought it wasn't there when I took it in, and that they had done it and had polished it out so that I wouldn't see it. I didn't say anything either when I collected it. So a bit of economy with the truth on both sides!

When my children were young in the late 70's early 80's I always told them when we had liver, that it was steak. And they loved it!! No way could we afford steak at the time. When they did discover the truth they suddenly hated 'steak' and never ate it again 🤣🤣

be careful with small children and recliner chairs.
there have been crush injuries caused when hiding underneath and operating the mechanism.

As a new wife I wanted to please new hubby by making him broth .
He had to have parsnips in it because that's how his Mum made it.
I had never eaten parsnips and when I tried, didn't like them.
I used to go to the local greengrocers and ask for the smallest parsnip they had.
I could then, truthfully, tell hubby I had put his beloved parsnips in the broth .
I did get used to parsnips. I can eat them roasted but, after 43 years of marriage, I am still not a huge fan !
Ps .....he does know this story now.
Thanks to Mr Greengrocer all those years ago who searched for the tiniest parsnip in the box xxx

I have to confess… we had a phase where the local kids would gather on our driveway at the bottom of our garden and smoke. One night , after a few G&Ts I tiptoed down the garden in the dark to spy on them.
I fell over a prized plant by hubby , in a pot and flattened it!
Retreated to bed.
When hubby discovered it next morning we both agreed that it must have been the fox!!

My mother always used to say: "I'll bang your head together, you two!"

She never did.

This was an outright fib. Years ago, our daughter aged 7 was going to ballet classes and longed for one of those pink wrapover cardigans they wear. Well, I found one in a puddle at the local tip. It washed fine and I told her it had been handed down by her godmother whose daughter was (is still!) four years older.

I went on holiday last year with my DS and his family. One of the places we stayed had electric recliner chairs and my GS, then under 3, was constantly pressing the button to recline the chairs. In the end we turned the plug off at the wall and told him the chair got tired after all that reclining. In the end he spotted the plug when his mum decided she wanted to recline. When he came to my house later he was looking for the plug for my recliners which aren't electric. Fortunately he isn't strong enough to pull the levers on them!

At one of my old firms we had a monthly partners’ lunch. Once the lady who did the catering produced a rabbit stew. All the men loved it. The (very few then) women wouldn’t touch it. She didn’t produce it again.

My mother wouldn't eat rabbit because she reckoned during WW2 that 'rabbit', skinned and hanging up in the butcher's was often cat...