People are realising that many of them were told the same white lie by their parents growing up, with one angry person even saying perpetuating the lie makes you an ‘a**hole’.
If you were unfortunate enough to lose a beloved family pet while growing up, did your parents ever tell you that they’d simply gone off to live on a farm? Because I have some bad news for you - Max is not living on a farm.
Yep, I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but your four-legged pal passed away and your parents thought it was nicer to pretend to you that they’d gone on to a new life on a farm, rather than explain that your dad had to bury them in the garden under a veil of darkness so you wouldn’t notice.
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And it turns out that people aren’t happy about this lie now they’re grown up enough to understand it.
In a post on Reddit from a couple of years ago, one angry adult wrote: “If you say that the family pet went off to live on the farm, then you're an a**hole. You will leave the kids confused, as to why you gave him up without letting you say goodbye, and without telling you.
"That will give your child more trust issues, and after that child finds out that you lied, then there will be more trust issues.
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“So if a family pet dies, just have a talk with your child about death and pets, instead of lying.”
Others agreed that honesty was the best policy and said that with their own kids they'd opted to be upfront about the situation.
Meanwhile, another person who was hit with the same lie - but took it a little bit better - commented: “My parents did this with me and my brothers. I understood as I was old enough but my brothers accepted it as they were younger.
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"My dog was ill and had to be put down so my parents said, ‘He’s going to live at a place that will make him better and he’ll live the rest of his life there running in fields and playing with all the other dogs’.”
Someone else said: “My dog was sent to a pig farm after she bit me… weird.” Yeah, I think the less said about that the better.
Oh and in case you were wondering, some parents are still peddling the lie, with a fellow Reddit user adding: “My sister keeps telling my nephew that my dog went on vacation. He’s stopped asking when Oscar is coming back after two months. He’s three I’m not sure he’ll remember this.” Here’s hoping.
Claire Reid