Ducky Mommy

We spend a lot of time teaching our children to tell the truth. And we insist on it.

From when they are very young, we repeat it in simple ways. Be honest. Tell me what really happened. Don’t say something if it isn’t true. It’s not just about correcting a behavior, it’s about building something that quietly holds everything together – TRUST.

And then, once a year, we do something different.

On the first of April, we allow the opposite. We laugh when someone is fooled, we admire a clever prank, and sometimes even the media joins in, sharing stories that are not true just for the sake of the day. It is meant to be light, playful, harmless. A small break from seriousness.

I understand the intention. But something in it feels less simple than it used to.

Not long ago, I saw a six-year-old boy sitting with a children’s magazine, completely absorbed. There was a picture of an animal that doesn’t exist, something just believable enough to feel real. He was asking questions with that quiet seriousness children have when they are trying to understand the world. Where does it live? What does it eat? Why haven’t I seen it before?

The adults around him were smiling. Some were even laughing.

They found it sweet, this innocence. The fact that he believed it.

But he wasn’t playing. He was trusting. Trusting what was shown, trusting what was presented as real.

And the laughter was not really about the joke. It was about the distance between what he believed and what the adults knew.

Maybe that is where my hesitation comes from.

Today, we already live in a world where truth is not always easy to recognize. Images can be altered so seamlessly that we stop questioning them. Voices can be recreated. What we see or hear is not always what is real, and once something is out there, it doesn’t disappear.

In that kind of world, truth is not just a value we talk about. It is something we try to protect.

So I find myself thinking about how I would answer if one of my children asked me about it, in a simple moment, without preparation. “Mum, why is it okay to lie today?” And I realize I don’t really have a clear answer, because everything I have been teaching them goes in the other direction. That words matter. That what we say should be true. That trust is built on that, slowly, day after day. And then suddenly, for one day, we turn it into a game.

Of course, they would understand. They are not confused. But it is not really about understanding. It is about what becomes normal, about what settles quietly through repetition. And today, we are already asking them to grow up in a world where they have to be careful with what they see, what they hear, what they believe. We tell them to pause, to question, to look twice.

In that context, adding a moment where misleading someone becomes something we celebrate, even lightly, does not sit as easily as it used to. Not wrong, just not quite aligned with everything else we are trying to teach.

And maybe that is where it shifts for me. If what we are really looking for is laughter, we can find it somewhere else, in something shared, not at someone’s expense, in something that does not rely on that small moment where someone believes something that isn’t true.

Because trust is built quietly.

It grows in small, repeated moments. It doesn’t ask for attention, but it asks for consistency.

And sometimes, what looks like a harmless joke from one side is simply a moment where someone believed… and was wrong.

Not because they were naïve. But because they trusted.