All Episodes

November 30, 2025 • 7 mins

# The Little White Lies Parents Tell Their Kids

Ever wonder why your parents rushed you out of events at intermission claiming "the show is over"? In this hilarious episode, our hosts dive into the creative deceptions parents use to manage their children. From the classic "intermission exit strategy" to telling kids that lobsters are "bugs" so they won't want to try them, we explore the amusing contradictions of teaching honesty while bending the truth. The conversation reveals how these harmless fibs cross generations as today's parents find themselves recycling the same creative stories.

## Timestamps and Key Takeaways:

**2:05** - The intermission escape trick: Convincing kids the show is over halfway through to beat traffic and save money
*Takeaway: This clever parenting hack has been passed down through generations*

**4:30** - Food-related lies: From "lobsters are bugs" to "coffee stunts your growth"
*Takeaway: Parents often use health concerns to discourage kids from adult foods*

**7:15** - Bizarre health warnings: The eye-booger myth and watermelon seed explosions
*Takeaway: Many childhood fears came from these creative but completely fabricated dangers*

**9:45** - The classic "starving children" guilt trip and other mealtime manipulation
*Takeaway: Food waste prevention tactics often involved questionable global comparisons*

If you've ever told your child a little white lie to make your day easier or found yourself repeating the same fibs your parents told you, you'll find yourself nodding and laughing throughout this episode. Listen now to join the conversation about these universal parenting shortcuts and maybe pick up a new trick or two!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You used to come in and say that.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
You would tell your children when they were at the
circus with you that during intermission that the show was over.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Oh yes, I remember this.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Now come on, it's over.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Yeah, you have no idea.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
You got to use this everything from Disney on Ice
to the rodeo to the circus, any of those events.
When intermission came and the lights went on, I would say,
come on, we gotta go. We getta beat the crowd.
And I said, we can grab a souvenir before they
run out. It's on the way out, you know. I'd
definitely take them in the store and grab the souvenir.
I said, come on, we'll never get out of the

(00:36):
parking lot.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
We'll get it hurt.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
They never knew, Yeah, never knew, never knew that it
was only half.

Speaker 4 (00:41):
There was a second half.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
That's a good one. I think one of the first
events that I took my son to when he was
probably two or three, was I think Disney on Ice. Yeah,
and you told me that before we went. He has
a hot tip.

Speaker 5 (00:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
Yeah, because nothing's going to change in the second half.
It's just more people skating around and animal most skating around.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
That's true. Oh god, so many lives on the.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Circus stays the same second half.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
I saw reel over the weekend and it was all
the lies your parents told you, and I checked every
single box. I believe all these were true.

Speaker 6 (01:13):
My parents when we were young used to tell us
when they were eating lobsters that they were eating bugs,
so we wouldn't want them.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Wow, that's creative. Well, aren't they kind of like bugs
crustations of the sea. Yeah, yeah, No, they're.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Not the bugs of the sea.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
But I know what you're saying. No, they used to
be A long time ago. They were they were They
weren't a delicacy. They were given to people in prison.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yeah, prison, and then the galleys rowing the ships. Yes, uh,
you know, the slaves were lack of a better word,
they would give them lobster, and then lobster.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Became they're scavengers basically.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
What it is now. Yeah, they are scavengers. Just keep
in mind when you're having the lobster. Everything they eat is.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Off the is off the bottom.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
Yes, their bottom feeder.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
They are right. Expense, it's odd when you think of it.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Expensive body, Oh my, and they keep getting more and
more expensive.

Speaker 5 (02:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (02:08):
My mom always said that if you had the shower
on while it was thundering and lightning out, that you
would get struck by lightning. So I still, at twenty
eight years old, will not take a shower if there's
a storm.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
Oh my god, my parents used to tell me that.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
I never heard that one. Yeah, and the pool was
a big one using water right wait, yeah, wasting the
water away? What are you doing in there? Yeah?

Speaker 7 (02:33):
You guys remember that.

Speaker 4 (02:35):
When we were younger, they would say if you had
a dream and you died in your dream, that you
would die in real life.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
I think I remember that, but I think it was
other kids that told me that, not my parents. Yeah,
that's a little morbid for your parents to tell you,
you know. But one of them was about coffee, that
if you drink coffee as a kid, it will stunt
your growth.

Speaker 4 (02:53):
As a parent, I still use the coffee will stunt
your growth. My toddler's always trying to take us at
my coffee, and I told him he'd shrink down like
ant man if he takes a step in.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
My coffee, and he still believes it.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
It's so crazy, like we teach our kids not to lie,
but then we kind of tell them lies.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
And there are so many more. I'm racking my brain
that my parents would tell me a lot of them
related to school or I mean, there are so many.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Well, you just want your kids to listen and do
what do what you tell them to do, and when
they won't, you gotta you gotta do what you gotta do.
Let's go to Selene online too.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
All right, Selene, you're online too.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Good morning. Add to the list.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Selene.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Hello, Selene. All right, Selene dropped off like that name.
That is a nice name. You don't meet a lot
of Selene's, you know. Yeah, Selene, we'll try to get
you on the second. Sorry about that.

Speaker 7 (03:46):
So I love dogs. My dad doesn't. And a big
lie he would tell me when I was a kid,
is dead while I pet a dog. If I get
the I booger of a dog and then rub it,
then rub my eyes, I would see black and white forever,
or I would get like blind. So that's a big lie.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
See now we're just just completely making stuff up here.

Speaker 3 (04:11):
I've never heard anything even resembling that.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
One never heard that there was one of the lists
about sneezing with your eyes open. I kind of was
speculating I don't think you can sneeze with your eyes open.

Speaker 4 (04:22):
I actually learned this from the college class ones. You
physically can't sneeze with your eyes open because it's a
reflex that your eyes automatically close.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yeah, I believe that well.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
I always was told that your heart skips a beat
when you sneeze, and I have sneezing jags in the morning.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
So you know my heart skips a beat just regularly. Yeah. Yeah,
I have like an a rythm.

Speaker 5 (04:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Wasn't there a song my heart skips a There is?
I think I have the same thing, but there's a
name for it.

Speaker 5 (04:50):
Really.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah, because I had an e KG, they thought something
was wrong and they said it was that, and they said,
it's no big deal, it's not Yeah, it's fine. What pill.
Wasn't there something about warts? Frogs? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (05:04):
They came from frogs?

Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yeah, frogs.

Speaker 5 (05:06):
I used to have actually a reoccurring nightmare about swallowing
a watermelon sleeed and being rushed into the hospital because
my stomach was going to explode from the watermelon road
in my stomach.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
I'm telling you, I was full of fear as a
kid when I heard these days.

Speaker 6 (05:22):
Yeah, mine was swallowing gum like, never swallow gum.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah, that it was really bad for you. It just
sits and the more that you you swallowed, the mall
would pile up.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
Yes, and we found proof to the contrary. Right with
the gum swallowing, it's a few days.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
It's a few days that sits in your stomach and
then it passes through.

Speaker 4 (05:38):
Good morning crew. This is not one that was told
to me, but something that I used to tell my kids.
I would tell them when we were at the beach
if they found a sand dollar and we put it
on the dashboard of the car, it would turned into
a real dollar. Kept them busy forever, and it only
cost me a few bucks. Have a good day.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
The beach. Let's go to Selene. I think she's back
online to Hey Selene.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
Hi, good morning, Hey, we got you give us a
good one.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
So when I was little, I was told if you
pick your nose and ate your buggers, it would make
worms grow.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
I never heard that one, but gross, Oh really.

Speaker 5 (06:27):
Yeah, what's he doing now?

Speaker 3 (06:31):
It's in the hospital getting a worm removed.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
I remember when we wouldn't finish all the food on
our plate at a time. Our parents would always say
you have to eat all of your food. There's children
starving in Africa, and thinking about it today, I'm like, well,
what was we supposed to do? Send them what we
didn't finish?

Speaker 1 (06:51):
I still my parents say that to me my kids.

Speaker 6 (06:56):
Yeah, well, it's about wasting food.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
It's having right, was.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
Sort of the moral of but they wanted to guilt you, right,
young children are starving in Africa.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, you got to eat those carrots. Yeah. Meanwhile, you know,
unfortunately there's starving kids everywhere. Yeah, exactly. Really it's about
food wasting.

Speaker 5 (07:13):
Yes, anybody hear the one that if you ate food
directly from the can, like canned soup or canned beans,
that you would get lockjaw and not be able to
open your mouth. That's a new one.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
Yeah, that's a new one on me because most of
what we ate came out of a can.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
True.

Speaker 6 (07:30):
Yeah, true, Morning Morning Show. I think you're forgetting that
a lot of our children are listening to you guys
on buses or on car drives to school. So thanks
for blowing our cover.
Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.

Crime Junkie

Crime Junkie

Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.