Why Is Lying Important to Deal With?
Lying is a very deep rooted issue. It is an extremely self-centered act. It is done at the expense of others for personal gain. Lying must be dealt with as part of the training of the child. If you can’t trust a child to tell you the truth, how can you let them out of your sight? How can you let them move on the next steps of training.
Lying is an effort to avoid taking responsibility for my humanity. It’s a natural response … if I can get away with it. So if it a “natural response” why must we take it so seriously, because lying is addictive. Lying can become so addictive that even the person doing it has a hard time deciphering the truth. Many times in residential program the children have been so conditioned to lie they have to be retrained to tell the truth.
A child must be taught to work on thinking out his response. I heard once that we shouldn’t as parents put our children in a position to lie. For example, a mom sees her young child throw a toy instead of asking “did you just throw that?” She can rephrase the question and say “I just saw you throw that toy” and proceed with the discussion. Help your child learn to discuss the whys of the situation. “mommy I threw the toy because I was pretending that it was a spaceship.” Even something as small as this can help a child process their responses. It is the job of the parent to help the child learn to accept the responsibility for his unacceptable behaviors and part of teaching responsibility. We want to raise children who are trustworthy so we must take lying very seriously.