How to Be A #10 Parent

As an elementary teacher, but even more so as an elementary principal, I was often frustrated with the amount of time that was consumed by youngsters who were fabricating the truth.  Sometimes their lying was obvious, and I knew darn well that they were wasting my time as well as their own.  In several instances an adult had witnessed their infractions or caught them red-handed, but they still persisted in lying, even when confronted with the eyewitnesses and sometimes with concrete evidence.

      What was troubling for me, however, was that I wanted these young people to tell the truth.  I wanted them to always be honest with me as their teacher or principal.  At some point early in my career it became my passion to find out why the children and youth in my care were lying and to derive a strategy of some kind for getting them to be honest and tell me the truth.  I made some interesting and important discoveries through my observations, and I eventually developed a strategy for cutting to the chase and getting right to the truth in most instances.  When we have the truth on the table, we are dealing with facts, not fiction, and I believe we can better help the young to learn and grow from their mistakes.

      In this chapter I will share with you my recommended strategy for causing children to tell the truth.  I have learned that some adults lie just like some children and youth do.  At times maybe all of us have fibbed a bit.  Although this book is intended primarily for parents, the strategy for getting to the truth can be used in an array of settings with all age groups.  It will work in penal institutions.  I was a reserve deputy sheriff for fifteen years, and I often employed the strategy when I made a traffic stop; therefore, I know it works for police officers as well.  As a parent, I noticed that our own children did not tell lies.  In fact, I do not recall any of them lying.  This is because my wife and I employed the strategy as a preventative tool which caused our children to tell the truth instead of lying.  In the school setting, I used the strategy some as an elementary teacher, as well as occasionally as a university professor.  I employed the strategy most, however, as an elementary principal.  The strategy works equally as well, though, for middle school, junior high, and high school students, and can be used virtually by anyone who cares for children and youth or adults, or anyone who supervises others in some capacity.

Why do children and youth lie?

      At least one of the main reasons that children and youth lie is for the same one that adults do so.  People of all ages and walks of life lie because they perceive at that given moment that the lying is safer than telling the truth, and many times it actually is safer. My own foster father was strict in his childrearing practices.  He had four of his own natural children and two foster children – my identical twin brother and me.  We all knew that we were in big trouble if we ever crossed him.  When we lied to him it was always out of fear of what would happen otherwise.  We lied to him because we wanted him to approve or at least hopefully be understanding of whatever we had done.  As I look back today, I realize that his bark was louder than his bite.  He raised his voice much of the time and often yelled at us but seldom actually touched us.  The fact is we were all afraid of him, and everybody in the family, including my foster mother “walked on eggshells” around him.  Telling him the truth when we screwed up was something, I think, we were all afraid to do.

      Even though all of the children felt more comfortable with my foster mother, whom we all called Mom; in some ways she was actually more strict.  When she was upset at us, she would usually grab a belt, stick, yardstick, board, or come at us with a razor strap in hand.  Holding one of these objects over our head she would ask us a question such as “

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