A lot of people will tell you that playing tricks on children by adults is cruel. But I also know a lot of mothers, rather than argue, will tell a lie to their children to make things go smoother.
Once, my brother caught a frog. I wanted to keep it in my room and my mother agreed. I was ecstatic. We got a big metal box and put plastic over it with a rubber band to keep it tight. When I woke up, the frog was gone. For years I wondered how it got away until I figured out that my mother knew I was a heavy sleeper and let me have it in my room so she could come it and take it out and let it go.
When I was a girl in the sixties, my birthday was coming up one year. In a store at the bottom of the hill was a doll. About eighteen inches tall. She was dressed as a cowgirl with a fringed skirt and plastic cowboy boots.
I fell in love with this doll at first sight. I asked my mom to buy it for me. No, she said it cost too much. For my birthday? No, too expensive.
One day I walked by the store and it wasn't in the window anymore. I was heartbroken. I had planned to save the money for her. I told my mom. Someone must have bought it. she said.
On my birthday I was handed a box about eighteen inches long. In it was the doll. My mother had bought it for me after all. I was ecstatic, thank you, thank you. We never said I love you in my family but thank you was okay.
Now some people I tell have said my mother was cruel to play that kind of trick. I don't know, I remember that birthday above all others.
It doesn't sound to me like your mother was cruel at all. She might have explained why frogs don't make good pets and deserve their freedom but I think your mother did what she felt right. And you still remember that birthday so I'd say she was a descent mom.
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