First I expect the kids to lie to stay out of trouble – most
people do, children and adults. However,
that does not mean my children get away with it. Usually they lie about little things like who
left the hall light on. It is usually, “Not
me”, “I don’t know” or any other answer like, “I forgot”. We tell them I don’t know or not me don’t
live here and get them to turn off the light or fix whatever the issue is.
When my daughter started grade one she also started taking
things from school and telling us a friend gave it to her, or it was a prize
from school we quickly questioned it. We
confronted her and made her tell the truth.
Part of what we did was go into the school and talk with her teacher to
find out the truth – in front of our daughter.
She had no choice but to confess to taking things and telling lies. It was quickly and firmly dealt with. We consistently followed up to make sure she
did not start stealing again.
We explained to our kids that telling us the truth is very
important, and that telling a lie results in a much worse punishment then
owning up and telling the truth in the first place. Also that once they lose our trust it is a
very hard thing to earn back. My kids
know that telling the truth is important to us, even when we don’t like the
truth.
So I was quite upset when my son lied about a big thing
tonight. My daughter came down stairs
and told me my son had a big red bump on his head. She tends to tell on him a lot, but this time
she did the right thing and I told her so.
My son comes down the stairs with his bangs hiding a great big red bump. We asked what happened – I don’t
remember. I don’t think so. We quickly figured out he had been injured
about two hours earlier when he had been playing outside. So now came the fun part of trying to piece
together what happened.
We could tell my son was reluctant to tell us what
happened. Usually when he gets hurt he
is the first one at the door telling us he has been hurt. I mean even bug bites he is at the door looking
for sympathy and attention. We have some
“bad” kids in the area who like to hurt the other kids. Our son knows that we don’t want him playing
with them. We thought maybe he was
playing with one of them and was injured by one of them. That he was reluctant to tell us because he
knows he is not to go near those kids.
Nope, he was not playing with any of them. Once we confirmed that he was not hurt by
another child we concentrated on getting the real story.
The story we eventually heard was that he slipped and fell
and hit his head. That it was just an
accident because he was running. No way was
that story the truth, not where the big bump was. I asked very specifically if he had fallen off
the fence and hit his head, and he said no. However we let it go and my husband checked him
over to make sure he was ok. He was made
to sit on the couch with an ice pack until bed time.
I waited until he was
in bed, safe. He had gotten away with
it. Not likely. I had a little talk with him explaining that
I knew he was lying and why. I had a
very good idea of how he had hit his head but needed him to tell me. After about a half hour it all came out,
exactly what I expected. He decided to
climb over the fence instead of using the gate, slipped and fell head first
onto a cement pad in our neighbour’s back yard.
He knew he was not supposed to be climbing the fence, that’s why we have
gates. So he hid the bump and did
everything he could to keep us from finding out.
He was expecting a full out punishment for doing something
we have been telling him for years not to do.
Instead he got me explaining to him how dangerous not telling us about
the head injury was. With the fences we
have around the back yards he could have really hurt himself, get a concussion,
or died. It took a lot but I think I got
through to him that he has to always let us know when he has been injured. Even when he thinks he will be in trouble. It is way more important to be safe and
healthy. Also I was very blunt about the
type of injury he had and how much worse it could have been. Most importantly I let him know that by
hiding it he could have made things much worse. If we had to rush him to the hospital and had
no idea how he got hurt or when, how could we tell the doctors what they needed
to know? I also calmly explained to him
how upset I was that he lied to us. I
think I got through to him because I was more concerned about getting him to
understand, then punishing him for the lie.
There are still going to be consequences for telling us lies, but it is
far more important to me that I can trust him, and know that he understands why
the truth is so important.
I am still very upset that he lied to me. Getting angry with him, or punishing him this
time would backfire. Being calm and
worried about how injured he was and how much worse it could have been was way
more effective this time. To be blunt, I
think that scared him far more than any possible punishment I could have given
him. It was also very important for him
to realise that he cannot get away with lying to us. We knew he lied, and figured out what
happened all on our own. There is no benefit
to lying to us, but there are to telling us the truth.