Children And Lying – Problems And Solution

A child learns through his or her surroundings. Be it good or bad, the environment around children is their greatest teacher. Their environment includes, media, peer pressure, the things they go through in their everyday life and through their parents too.

However, what happens if the same environment inculcates bad habits, what happens when they take dishonesty casually?

Parents are the wall that stays firm for their children so that they (the children) do not have to suffer. However, at times even parents cannot limit the information that seeps through their child from the environment that they breathe in. they cannot always form a protective wall around the kids so that nothing harms them  Some parents do feel hurt in such situations when their child demonstrates what’s been injected into him by the society. However, is feeling hurt a solution for the problem? Should the parents start believing that their child has taken a wrong route permanently?

Should parents lose their cool in such a case?

Information, despite it being bad or good is available from just about everywhere. When bad ideas are introduced to kids through various means, it becomes hard for parents to undo its effects. Those ideas have already been injected into their innocent minds; their lies though innocent in nature, are just a cover for them to fit in, among their peers and their parents too.

When a child lies, and slowly becomes a habitual liar, many parents tend to believe that their kid has turned rotten, they label him “bad,” since as per current societies, if lying is bad, a liar has to be a bad person as if robbery is bad, the robber has to be a bad human.

As parents lower their impression towards their kids, the children having been marked a liar, indulge in this practice even more. They hide the truth even more, so that their parents do not look down upon them, more than they already do. They take lying as a natural cover.

What’s going on in a child’s mind when they are lying? Do they really know what the after effects of lying are?

Children know that lying is forbidden but they have the impression that it does not hurt anyone if they lie; it is just a simple lie for them. They do not know that it can have a long-term repercussion.

For instance, the kid thinks, “so what if I watched cartoons an hour longer, what’s the big deal?”

Alternatively “What’s the harm in eating too much of chocolate, my teeth are still healthy!”

Hence, what is the best way for parents to deal with lying? Despite having things under control, how do they get the children to learn that they should not lie?

The first thing parents should do is to not to give too much of freedom, and to not over emphasize on the fact that they are lying. If you have a kid who is angry with you or who feels frustrated and powerless, and if the child feels that he can get control over you by lying, he will certainly do so. He will hold back information and lie by omission when you are trying to get the truth out.

Honesty is important, but if communicated too strongly to children, they will use it to have power over parents. They will just take it as a protest against themselves.

Parents have to assume that kids are going to lie, because they are immature and they do not understand the negative side of it. It is not that the good kids do not lie and the bad kids do lie. They are all drawn to excitement, and they all have a tendency to distort the truth because they are kids.

Children are an empty slate, they learn from the impressions that are left on them. If they contain negative impressions, the duster of love and the chalk of patience can improve them.

Instead of forming a bad impression about their children, parents should embrace the truth and should try to take them towards betterment. A little patience and a lot of encouragement towards honesty can help children choose the right path, after all, it is their elders they follow the most. Love and belief in your children, can make miracles happen.

Hence, if today your child is lying, do not isolate him or her, by labeling them negatively. It is important to believe that children can be talked towards taking the right path, using right values and strong morals, which must be set by the parents. These walls of values should be so strong that negativity cannot seep through them.

It is in our hands to build a better future for our kids and it all starts right from an early age.

Parents should help children to get the right meaning of right and wrong. If kids know what is wrong and why is it so, the negative would never wound them. A liar is made by the surroundings but honesty comes from the patience parents take to inculcate good values in their kids.

Image courtesy: generationnext_com_au