Ten Common Lies from Elementary School Children

There are many lies that children try to tell the substitute. They think that they can get away with them because their regular teacher isn't there.
I've compiled a list of the most common ones.

"It's lunch time! We're going to miss lunch!" I haven't quite figured out if this really is a lie or whether the children are really mistaken about when lunch time is. They often tell me 1-2 hours in advance that it's time to go to lunch. They think that I don't have a schedule of what to do each hour, even when I clearly tell them that I have a lesson plan.They'll even exclaim sometimes that it's lunch time for the rest of the day. They would get restless and bored so fast that they would scramble to get back into the classroom, if that was the case.

"I need to go to the bathroom." This is probably the most common lie in the classroom. No one needs to go to the bathroom at separate times during the day. They all need to go around the same general time. Sometimes they'll try to delay it just a little bit so it won't be obvious that they're trying to get out of the classroom. Some children just get jealous that their friend gets to go to the magical bathroom, where you can be free and not have to worry about doing any of their work. I used to be a rookie about how to tell if someone needs to go to the bathroom or not, but you can easily tell if they need to go to the bathroom if they seem anxious, worried or are fidgety.

"I'm sick can I go to the office." I get this one almost every day that I substitute. They are never sick and they will always try to go home. The worst case of this lie was last week when I substituted for first grade. I had a girl bump her head and every ten minutes she came up to me and asked if she could go get some ice from the office. Before that incident she wanted me to let her call her mom at home. I said, "This is school not a 5 star hotel suite." Of course she didn't understand the joke. Her friend was worse. She entered school kicking and screaming for her mom to let her stay home. I thought her mom was going to yell at me for torturing her child the day before. Luckily, she just sent her own child to the office for them to deal with it. She came in later, happy as pie. I couldn't help but wonder if they told her that I wasn't going to be there the next day.

"I need to sharpen my pencil." This is not so much a lie as it is a time waster. You can spend all day and night letting the children sharpen their pencils. The most annoying part is that it's so loud and that the children never know how to sharpen their pencil right. The pencils themselves are worthless too, so even if they do sharpen they just break again easily. The lie behind sharpening their pencil is that the classroom usually has a switch off bucket. You put in your dull pencil and you trade it for a sharp one. The problem is that students want to keep their pencil, so they try to get away with sharpening their own.

"I'll be good now." This isn't more of a lie as it is wishful thinking on my part. I hope that they will behave themselves if I just give them a warning, but it always escalates more and more. Once I tell them that I'm going to give them a time out or take their recess, they give me the response. They promise that they won't misbehave anymore and for a good 2 minutes they may actually behave, but it never lasts. It always gets worse and what I used to think was harsh has become common place.

"I didn't take it." There is always an episode of theft in the classroom. A student will always come up to me and say that someone took their pencil, a "fancy" one. This lie can also include slights that happened against them. They will tell on their students for perceived name calling or getting pushed. One time a student told on another student that she was pushed. The other student claimed innocence, even though I was one foot away from the incident and was actually talking to the student at the time that he pushed the little girl. Whatever happens, just lie, that's the motto.

Another time a student was missing a toy truck, so he told the teacher that someone stole it. The teacher asked the class who took his truck. No one admitted their guilt. She then found it in one of the student's cubbies. She told him that stealing was wrong and that he needed to apologize. He cried and ran to put his head down. I don't blame him for not telling the whole class he was a thief. That would have carried on all the way until high school.

"He said a bad word." I hate this one the most. Not because it's annoying, but because it actually got my assignment pulled from me. Four 5^th grade girls went to the principal at lunch and told them that I was playing favorites and cussing. The word they got me for was "bull." Children think that any word said with anger is a bad word. My last teaching assignment was in kindergarten and a student told me that someone said a bad word. I asked her what word it was. She wouldn't tell me, but she did give me the first letter. She said that it started with W. Now think for a second of what word it could have been. I couldn't think of anything. I asked her for the second letter, but she didn't know, since she was only in kindergarten. I'm guessing that the student either said wuss or wimp. Uh oh, does associated content allow bad words?

"The teacher let's us do it." This one really bothers me because they think that I care how the teacher runs the classroom. They will stop me every five seconds to tell me that I'm not doing something right. How am I supposed to know what their teacher does? On the flip side, they try to get away with things that the teacher wouldn't let them do. One of the most common ones is trying to sit wherever they want to, especially on the carpet. Most of the time other students will shout out that they are lying, which doesn't really help me all too much.

"I can drink as long as I want." When the students come in after recess the teacher lets them get a quick drink before they sit down. There is always a water hog, always. The counting process goes like this, "One two three is all you need." Some don't care and think they can just sneak in extra time. Maybe they think they need more water. I've had students waiting for drinks for like ten minutes when they should have been sitting at their desks and paying attention. I should put a kool aid pack down the water pipe next time, so they'll think they're drinking sewage.

"My mommy gave it to me." This is the newest lie to my list of common lies. This one took me by surprise. The story was from kindergarten, which is my favorite grade. It was after recess and one of the children told me that a girl had stolen something from the playground. She had snuck wood chips into her pocket from the playground. I said, "What is that? Give that to me." She told me that her mommy gave it to her. I couldn't believe that she would even try to lie about that. She didn't even live with her mom and what mom would give her daughter wood chips to take to school. I was most shocked at how well she lied to me.