All parents have experienced this scenario (or one like it):
You come around the corner and see your child sitting in front of the pantry with chocolate on his face and candy wrappers around him. What’s the first thing you do?
“Honey, did you take some chocolate from the pantry?”
Why do we do this? We know exactly what happened, so why do we give them an opportunity to lie? I think we imagine we are giving them an opportunity to confess. That isn’t a bad thing, but it can come across as manipulative and make our kids feel like we’re trying to trick them. If we know, why did we ask them? Our kids have to wonder if we truly don’t understand or if we’re asking them to create a more acceptable story to keep them out of trouble.
I have to admit that most of my parenting wisdom has been gained by parenting kids from trauma. These kids may have more of a tendency to lie when caught or to persist in a lie even in the face of evidence. Maybe your kids always tell the truth when you catch them, but for those kids who struggle with honesty, I have found it to be helpful to take the option of lying off the table.
Brian and I were at a foster parent training recently where this topic was discussed. One of the men who works at our agency and who also had years of group home experience phrased it this way, “When we interrogate our kids in these situations we are encouraging them to practice lying and become better liars.” I totally agree. And once we’ve created an opportunity for the child to lie, we now have to discipline them both for the original problem and for the lie. It’s overwhelming for both parent and child.
There will be moments where you have to ask your child what happened because you don’t know. In those moments it’s important to talk about your child’s credibility and how important it is that you can trust your child. And if you honestly don’t know who broke the lamp in the living room you may need to issue a general consequence to the family (no one gets to play in the living room today) and also explain to your kids that while you don’t know the truth, God does. I can’t tell you how many sins I confessed to when my mom gave me that knowing look and said, “Be sure your sin will find you out.” Along with letting our kids know that God sees even their secret sins, it’s important for us to take some comfort in that, too. We aren’t all knowing and can’t always provide the right consequence at the right time especially when we have a child with an honesty problem, but that doesn’t mean they won’t still experience a consequence. Sometimes as parents we have to trust God to do what’s best for our kids even when we don’t know what that would be.
So next time you find marker on the wall and see your child standing there with the marker in his hand, go right to handling the problem instead of starting with an inquisition.
“Honey, we don’t write with marker on the wall. Markers are for paper. Go get a rag and wipe this up and then we’ll put the markers away for the rest of the day.”
Does this mean that occasionally you will discipline a child for something they didn’t do? It’s possible. I think that’s an opportunity to talk to kids about the company they keep and the appearance of evil. If you come around the corner and the child holding the marker up to the wall was not actually the child who drew on the wall, they may still need to help you clean it up and lose marker privileges along with having a conversation about why you believe they made the mess and how if they didn’t make the mess, they needed to be more proactive about not being where trouble is happening. That’s an important lesson we all have to learn at some point.
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