Children and Honesty: Life Lessons for Everyone

Teaching your children about the truth is not easy. As adults we learn to tell little white lies in order to spare someone else feelings or to get out of doing something we don't want to do. I try to be as honest as possible because being honest to others makes me feel I am being honest to myself. I have also tried to lead by example and reinforce my actions through explanations. I have always told my children that they need to tell the truth even if it means they may get in trouble. I also tell them they will be in more trouble if the lie instead of being truthful. This philosophy has worked until recently. I caught myself teaching my children to lie when I took them to a swim party. The rule to the pool was that children five and under have to be accompanied in the pool. My son is five. We had soccer games all that day and I did not feel like swimming. So, as we were driving I told my children to say that my son was six because I didn't want to go swimming. They were confused about me telling them to lie. I thought for a moment and then realized that what a bad example I was setting for them. I was teaching them to lie, and why? All because I didn't want to go swimming; that was not a good reason. I turned around and went home and got my swimsuit. I told them I was wrong. Lying is not okay and I shouldn't have asked them to lie. Tell the truth. I told them that I would go swimming if I had to because I wasn't going to lie and I would follow the rules. I taught them some very good lessons in life that day. I taught myself something as well.

This incident made me think about honesty. Children don't understand concepts about reason like adults. Rules such as honesty only apply except when safety is a factor. An example would be a child left home alone. The phone rings the child answers the phone, the child says the parent is in the shower or busy and can't come to the phone. The child lied because the parent was really not home. Do children really understand the difference between safe lies and lying in general? Are we setting our children up for learning to be dishonest? Or are we just teaching them that white lies are okay, especially when safety is concerned, and honesty is usually the best method? These are tough questions. This article is not about how to teach your children not to lie. It's about the impact of lying and teaching honesty with children.

Several weeks ago we were at the park for soccer practice. It was my five years olds practice and my eldest son brought a couple little toys with him to occupy himself. He set down the toys and got busy playing with something else. Some other children had picked up his toys and walked off with them. We went around asking as many children as possible if they had seen his toys. Everyone said no except a couple children who played ignorant to what I was asking. Finally, a girl in the group pulled out one of his toys and said, "Is this what you are looking for?" I said yes. I asked the other children in the group if they had some as well. They told me no. I believed them to be lying but being limited to what I could do being they are someone else's children. I told my son that I thought some other children were not being honest and they had stolen his toys. I taught my son not only about how honestly affects others but about stealing someone else's things. I told him that when you take something that belongs to someone else it hurts the person whom it belonged to.

When we first moved to California, I heard an Amber Alert in our area go out on a little boy. There were two boys playing in a field with paintball guns. The boys dug a hole and one climbed in. The dirt collapsed on top of him, burying him alive. The other boy ran home and told his family they were playing when a car pulled up and a man shot his friend and when the boy fell the man put the boy into the car and drove off. Police were looking for hours for an abductor and a missing boy, when in reality it was an accident and there was no abductor. The amber alert was called off and the boy was found dead. This case was another example of why we need to teach our children about honesty. If the boy had told the truth his friend's life may have been spared.

Teaching our children about being honest will save them from a life of misery. It will teach them to trust in themselves and feel good about the person they are. It prevents horrible problems like the boy who told the lie that assisted in his friend's death. Even small problems like with my son who learned early on about dishonesty in the world and among others. What sometimes may feel petty to us can mean the world to someone else. Teaching life lessons in our youth encourages us to become a better world, an honest and fair society.

http://missingandmurderedchildren.facesofthemissing.org/2008/03/20/3-19-08-ca-amber-alert-another-tragedy/