So I told a lie yesterday. Well, I probably told about a dozen lies yesterday. But this particular one was a lie that I pondered over for several minutes before commiting to it. Twenty-four hours later, and I'm still debating whether or not I should have fibbed.

Here's the rundown:
As you know, I work for Talitha Koum--a daycare/nurture center in South Waco that serves the families in the local housing projects. Our kids range from infant to kinder. A good number have been neglected and/or physically, sexually, or emotionally abused.

That said, there's a particular girl in my classroom--let's call her Kimmy. She just turned 4. When Kimmy first began attending Talitha Koum, she was suffering from post-traumatic shock...as a toddler! (She was born in prison, and later witnessed the stabbing of her father...by her mother.) She refused to talk to anyone, and when she did choose to communicate, it took the form of a deafening scream. Kimmy has come a LONG way. Believe me. True, she is particulalry violent with some of the other students. True, she tends to curse incessantly when she's upset. But, she's willing to problem solve now, which is a huge step.

One factor that makes Kimmy's case particularly difficult from day-to-day, is that she regularly gets a beating at home--for wetting her pants, for getting dirty, for talking back, etc. In fact, when she wets her pants during naptime at Talitha Koum, we rush them to the dryer to dry them so that when her dad comes, he'll be none-the-wiser.

Well, yesterday, Kimmy and I had been struggling. She didn't have a nap, plus she visited with her play therapist. Each one of these acting alone can cause the child to have a turbulent afternoon. Just think about how rough things can get when both factors work together!

Anyways, to make a long story short (too late!), Kimmy was having a big crying fit at the end of the day for not being able to carry her blanket around. As luck would have it, her dad (who is huge by the way) walked in and in his loud, deep voice yelled at her to stop crying and come home. I scurried off to find her shoes while he got her coat on. When I handed Kimmy's dad her shoes, he asked me why she was crying.

So I lied to him.
I paused for a second, and told him that she had fallen and hurt herself a couple minutes before he arrived.

Should I have told the truth, knowing she would most certainly gone home to a spanking?

I keep trying to rationalize it over and over in my head but I can't come to peace with it.

For I know that I'll (hopefully) be a father myself within a couple years, and I definitely wouldn't want to be lied to by my child's teacher because they disagreed with the way I raised him/her.

So where does that leave me? I sinned. Though justified, a lie is a lie is a lie. Perhaps I saved Kimmy for the moment, but is there anything right about what I did?



I don't know.