People lie.
Adults lie. Children lie.
When grown-ups are asked to record their own lies, they admit to about one lie for every five social interactions. Adults lie about once a day, on average, and college students are double that. Most of these lies are white lies. They are meant to make others feel good or to prevent others from feeling bad or to avoid embarrassment.
Our white lies help our children become comfortable with being insincere, disingenuous, dishonest. Most of us end up teaching our children -- through our own white lies -- that honesty can create conflict and dishonesty is an easy way to avoid conflict.
Children know the difference between a white lie and lying to cover their own misdeeds, but teaching and modeling how to tell a white lie lays the groundwork mentally and emotionally for lying. It gradually becomes easier for the child to lie to the parent.
So how do we handle it? How do we help our child tell the truth? Slow down. Listen and observe your child. It is a basic parenting skill: Listen Actively! Children freeze, or fidget. You can almost see them thinking.
Help your child to tell the truth. If they say something mean or inappropriate, does it really matter where they learned it? Most of the time, it doesn't. What matters is the parenting. Don't set your child up to lie by making demands that are a set up for a lie. If the child can tell you are really upset and you demand the truth, you have put them in a very scary situation.
Stay calm, tell them the truth. "Wow! That really surprised me when you said that. Let's talk about it." What matters is the teaching, the values, the lesson, the morals, the quality of the connection between two people.
Lies distance us from others. Too many lies cut us off from those we love. Help your child stay connected by exploring that urge to hide the truth, to be insincere and to be dishonest in their closest relationships. Slow down and talk about it. Try to understand. And do that together.
Pay attention today to your own truth telling. Challenge yourself to find ways to manage social situations in a more truthful and respectful manner. We are never to old to learn how to be more genuine, to discover more about who we are.
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