“Truth or dare?” he asks her, in a conspiratorial half whisper. She immediately responds with “Dare!” All confidence. 

“I dare you to tell mom you loooooove her!” he goads and she grins and races to the kitchen where I’m doing dishes (or the office, where I’m catching up on the blogverse – or the bathroom, where I’d foolishly thought I might find three minutes to myself).

“Mom, I loooooove you!” she says and then bursts into a fit of giggles and runs back out of the room, yelling “Truth or dare!?” back, keeping the game going.

He chooses dare and she double dares him to tell me that he wants to live with me forever. Message delivered. Message received.

Sometimes they choose truth but neither of them seems to understand what happens when you choose truth and they pretty much just give more dares, similar to the ones mentioned above. “Tell mom you think PINK is your favorite color!” she might insist and he’ll groan as though THIS is the worst dare ever. He’ll try to get out of it and she’ll say fine “Dare or DARE?” and he’ll try to guess which dare could be the worst.

“First dare?” he’ll try and she’ll laugh maniacally.

“I DARE you to tell mom that you want TACOS for dinner.”

“But, I do want tacos for dinner,” he’ll start to say but then he’ll run to me before she changes her mind, “Mom, I want tacos for dinner!”

And I think to myself, “Clearly, I’m doing something right.” When the worst thing my kids can imagine daring one another to do involves TELLING me what they are doing. I keep waiting with semi bated breath for a real dare to come along – for me to need to swoop in and intervene but it’s been weeks and I’ve heard nothing crazier than their attempts to add new categories to the  game.

“Dare or MADAM?” he might try.

“What happens if I choose madam?” she asks, worried.

“Then I’ll say something SCAAAAARRRRRRY!” he warns. She giggles with delight and immediately chooses “MADAM!”

“Dinosaurs….” he’ll moan, “Dinosaurs are SCAAAAARRRRRRY!!!!!!”

Never change kids. Never change.