A Friend of Mine Was Living With a Couple In London

A real-life story that always makes me think about good and bad parenting

This is a real-life story of someone whom I know, who has been living in London for many years.

Once, he told me that he was living there with a local English couple. They were newly married. He lived in one part of the house, and they rented the other part to him.

During this time, they had a son. There was never any problem between them and him. He used to pay rent at the end of every month.

We lived together for twelve years. They never hurt me, nor did I ever hurt them.

One day, they asked me, “What are you doing tomorrow?”

I said: “Tomorrow is my holiday and I will stay at home.”

Hearing this, they expressed their happiness and said, “We want to make a small request of you.”

I said, “Yes, please do.”

They said, “We have to go out of town on very important business. If you are on leave and you are at home, we cannot take our son (Douglas) with us. Please take care of Douglas.”

I said, “It would be my honor to be of service to you.”

It was agreed that they would leave in the morning, and I would stay in his portion.

In the morning, when they were getting into the car, I waved good morning, and I went straight to their portion. Douglas was about nine years old.

He was sitting on the couch, working on his laptop. I said good morning to him, and he smiled and replied.

I asked: “What’s for breakfast?”

He said no.

I went straight to the kitchen, where breakfast was prepared. I brought the tray and placed it in front of him.

He put the laptop aside and started eating.

After breakfast, he picked up the glass of milk on the tray, which slipped from his hand and fell, breaking.

He looked at me, embarrassed. I reassured him: “It’s okay, I’ll clean it up.”

I collected the broken glass and put it in the cupboard, swept the floor, and threw the broken glass pieces outside in the trash.

Then I went to my section, brought a glass exactly like it, and put it in the kitchen.

Douglas was still embarrassed.

I told him, “Don’t worry, I’ve put a glass just like it; you don’t need to tell anyone.”

Then we played all day. In the evening, his parents came back. They thanked me and said, “Have dinner with us today, then go.”

During dinner, they kept using nice words for me. Later, I said goodbye to them and went back to my section.

The next morning at six o’clock, Douglas’ parents were standing at my door.

I was surprised.

They said, “You are a good person; we have never had any complaints from you, but now you should find another house for yourself and vacate our house quickly.”

I said, “Why so soon? What have I done wrong?”

They replied: “You are a good person, but yesterday you encouraged our son to lie. That is why we are forced to separate you from us.”

I asked: “What lie?”

They said: “The glass broke, it was no big deal, but you asked our son not to mention it to anyone. We always teach our son to tell the truth. He has told us everything. But you encourage him to tell a lie. Now we are afraid that our child may be affected by your lies while living with you, so please make your arrangements somewhere else. Thank you.”

This story may not mean anything to you, but this story has a profound meaning.

The story has two sides; I’ll share both with you, and then you decide which of these you find most satisfying.

No-1: The parents were doing the right thing to protect their child from developing a bad habit of telling lies. They were afraid that their child would start to tell lies like this to us. If the boy told a lie and hid something as small as breaking the glass, then he would also lie if the other man did something wrong to him or abused him in the future.
Maybe the man spent all day with the boy playing with him, having a good time just to get closer to the boy, but he didn’t mention any of his afterward part of the day doesn’t mean he was not intended to. As parents, they were unable to trust the man anyfurther so they asked him to leave.

No-2: Or the man was right and had no bad intentions; it was just the parents who thought hiding something from them was a lie, and saving a boy from feeling guilty was a crime. Making their only child a robot. The boy would never understand how to get out of some serious situations in life just because their parents told they to be so nice and always tell the truth. But sadly, this was an experiment of life that every child and parent would go through.

These were the two sides that we can just assume. Tell me in the comments which side you think would be the case.

— Ghani