It should be a straightforward assessment: you can either be honest (which, of course, is what we all strive for and what we teach our kids to be) and then there's dishonest (which, obviously, is what we try not to be.)
Except, really, there's a lot of shades of grey in between.
I can't lie (see, there's me being honest): there's some serious bending of truth around our house.
There are, of course, the classics - the little white lies that almost all parents indulge in: how the toys appear on Christmas morning, where chocolate eggs come from, why there's a quarter (or these days, actual bills) under the pillow in exchange for a tooth.
Almost everyone fibs a little bit about these things, coming up with unique explanations about chimneys, elves, fairies who have strange obsessions with our dental work.
Some people adamantly refuse to create even these "harmless" untruths, saying that it sets a bad precedent about dishonesty and trust and only leads to disappointment.
I understand why they feel that way, but I can honestly say: I am most definitely not one of those people. Not only do I offer up all the basic and usual tales, but I confess I'm prone to embellishing them.
We have, for example, an elf who arrives on Dec. 1, with our box of Christmas books and Advent calendars. The books have spent the year in the North Pole library, and our elf kindly uses his magic to return them to us for the Christmas season.
We have tiny little doors and windows nailed into the base of several trees in our yard - homes for the elves that live here year-round (though they mostly sleep during the day and come out at night, of course.)
My son loves exploring around the base of the tree, peering down into the grass to see if he can spot any elf footprints left behind. He finds interesting shaped twigs and leans them up against the tiny door, so that the elves can have a walking stick if they need it.
Nickels, dimes and quarters that have accidentally fallen out of pockets onto the floor may just be a bit of left-over dwarf treasure that got left behind.
When the wind was whipping around the house recently, my son said it sounded like talking. So I suggested that perhaps it was the Ents - the ancient tree creatures from the Lord of the Rings.
He was fascinated - who were the Ents? What did they look like? How do they talk?
At the end of the conversation, he asked the same thing he always asks after we discuss such things: "Mama, are they really real?"
And I answered what I always answer: "What do you think? Are they real in your imagination?"
And he smiled and said, "Yes, I think they should be real."
Some would argue that I'm setting my kids up for disappointment - to discover later that in fact no red-capped gnomes are living under the zucchini leaves, that the tree elves don't come out at night, that the Ents are nothing more than the creation of a very active imagination.
Perhaps I am - but I also know there's something to be said for believing in magic, for seeing the world as full of possibility, of letting the brain stretch out to create fantastical worlds.
Someday, of course, they'll discover the truth about it all - which I hope is simply that our imaginations can take us anywhere, and it's a damn fun ride along the way.
Christina Myers is a reporter with the Burnaby NOW and the Royal City Record. Follow her on Twitter, under @ChristinaMyersA.
