My son is five years old. That’s a great age and he is a great, sporty and talented boy. He has a good friend called Felix. Felix is one and a half years older than my son, i.e. 7. Felix had his birthday and wanted to celebrate his birthday in the cinema and also invited my son to participate. This seems to be a problem because the film is only for children of 6 years of age or older.

My son is tall and looks older. He has been raised to always tell the truth. Lies are not tolerated. However this caused a problem here. When we wanted to celebrate his sister’s birthday, we wanted to go to the cinema and watch the movie “Tangled”.  I wanted to purchase the tickets at the cashier and the sales assistant dutifully asked me how old the children are. And I truthfully said that the boy is 5 year old. She denied me the purchase of the tickets. Three months later we bought the DVD “Tangled” and all of us watched it together at home.

However now my son wants to go to the cinema with Felix and the other children. I can hardly tell him he cannot go because of the age limit. But what happens, if someone asks him how old he is? What happens, if all the other children are let in and he not? He would be really hurt. I am fighting with myself. I value truth and honesty but in this case it does not make much sense for me, since he will be six years old this year. I then told him that he if someone asks him he should lie and say that he is six years old. With the cinema it worked. However I didn’t like it at all!

On the weekend we went with his grandfather by train to Liestal. As he is not yet six years old, he does not need a ticket. The ticket inspector came, looked at him and asked, how old he is and he said 5 (for I few seconds I was afraid that the cinema lie would catch up and he would say 6). She thanked him and went on.

Two days later his grandfather was again travelling by train with him and our new au-pair girl, who had started that day. My father does not speak German and the au-pair girl’s German is not much better. The conductor came and asked my son how old he is. He said 5 but the conductor did not believe him. He asked for an ID. My son has an ID but that is in my purse. Obviously I had not given them the ID. The au-pair had the newly signed work contract with attachments where his year of birth was stated: 2009. A typo! Instead of 2006 it said 2009. The conductor rightly believed that the boy cannot possibly be 3 years old and imposed a penalty of 200 Swiss francs on them.

It is true that finally I only had to pay 5 Francs, since I could prove that he is really 5 years old. However I fear that this won’t be the last story where we have to fight the age limit. Now he would like to go to the same hockey club as Felix, however the club only admits boys at the age of 7.