Every parent wants their child to be truthful. While we’d all love to believe that we can teach our children to never tell a lie, that’s probably not very realistic.
According to Kristen Eastman, PsyD, of Cleveland Clinic Children’s, it’s important for parents to remind themselves that everyone has lied at some point, but knowing that the intentions are different at different ages can help guide their actions.
“Very young kids, for example, will often make up stories,” Eastman says. “It’s not that they’re lying to necessarily mislead you, it’s just an extension of their active imagination at that age. That magical, fantasy kind of thinking.”
Eastman adds preschoolers will start to test the waters to try to evade consequences, but it’s not necessary to get too worked up about mistruths told by a preschooler, because at that age, they are still learning the difference between right and wrong.
As children get older, Eastman says they will begin to test the limits more, whether it be at school or at home. She notes this is a good time to start enforcing some rules and to consider making the consequences for lying greater than the actual act. Eastman says it’s important for kids to understand that lying carries a different weight than whatever misstep they’ve made.
Teens, on the other hand, know when they’re lying and will definitely try to use lying to get out of trouble. And although it’s difficult for parents to enforce truthfulness at this age, Eastman says it’s important to have an ongoing dialogue with teens, reinforcing the values of the family. She also encourages parents to teach their teenagers how listen to their gut instinct.
“You know that feeling, that ‘not so good’ feeling that we get after we make a wrong choice? You know that’s guilt, obviously, and to teach kids to pay attention to that gut instinct, because more often than not, if they’ve made a choice to lie and they tried to get away with something, they’ve felt that gut instinct kind of pop up,” she says.
Eastman also reminds parents that we can’t teach being truthful if we’re not modeling being truthful ourselves. Even if it’s a white lie to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, parents have to be able to differentiate, to older children, the difference between being polite and trying to mislead.
— Courtesy of Cleveland Clinic News Service
