HOW TO TEACH YOUR CHILD TO BE HONEST
Little boy ashamed about lying.
When our children are little, lying can seem cute and almost humorous at times. When you ask your two-year-old, “Did you take a chocolate chip cookie?”, she immediately shakes her head, hides the half-eaten cookie behind her back, and says with chocolate-covered lips, “No, Mommy, I didn’t.”
Mom asking young daughter if she took a cookie.
At this age, these little lies somehow seem funny because they’re so obvious. But when you add ten years to seemingly innocent 5-year-old lying, you’ve got a teenager skillful at lying about adolescent behaviors – not completing homework, skipping school, experimenting with drugs, and engaging in sexual relationships. By this age, they will have learned to lie well, just in time to destroy their lives and relationships. The older they get, the harsher the consequences of deception can become – leading to loss of jobs, broken marriages and families, and more.
Little girl processing lying, trying to decide if it is effective for getting what she wants.
Moms have asked:
What age should children be held accountable for lying? If a child has the mental capacity to lie, they are old enough to learn not to. Remember, you are not alone in this – almost all children go through a lying stage. It is how we respond to it early on, before it becomes a habit, that will either encourage honesty or allow devastating deception to become rooted in your children.
How do you keep them from lying? All four of our children went through a lying stage. While you can’t keep them from lying, you can put consequences in place to make lying less comfortable and begin to teach them how to be honest, which is a much healthier life option.
One of the most significant effects on our children’s perspective on honesty is our own actions. When your husband asks, “Why is the Visa bill so high this month?” and we say, “I don’t know,” deciding not to tell him that we bought some new shoes and jeans not in the budget. Or when police sirens sound behind our car, and we say, “Oh no, I was speeding!” Then the officer comes to our window and asks, “Did you know you were speeding?” and our automatic response is, “No, Officer!” Your children hear those responses. We can either condone lying or promote truthfulness with our words and actions. They are watching us and are doing what we do.
How do you teach your children to be honest? Our children each have unique personalities. Some children’s consciences make it easier to teach honesty, while other children’s personalities are more difficult to train. I’ve had both. My youngest daughter’s conscience wouldn’t let her live with a lie. She would immediately come and confess, while my son would misrepresent the truth (lie) to keep from taking the consequences of his actions or to keep people from thinking poorly of him.
There are four key elements to teaching your children honesty:
Calmly talk to your child about why they lied. Finding the underlying reason can help you learn how to encourage them to be honest and offer tools to help them choose honesty. If your son lied to hide his act of deliberately breaking his brother’s toy, that is a different discussion than a child lying to protect her brother from getting hurt or lying because she was ashamed that she hit another child. These are all still lying and need to be addressed, but talking to your child with understanding will open their heart and give you an opportunity to offer other ways to handle the situation. Helping your child recognize other options makes it easier for them to choose honesty in the future. You might say to your son, “Why did you feel like you needed to lie about breaking your brothers’ toy?” Hear his heart and try to understand his motivation. He will appreciate being heard and will be more likely to be open to other ways to handle situations in the future. He might say, “I was angry that he wouldn’t share.” Then you can say, “I understand. Next time, maybe you could take a deep breath to calm yourself and then ask him if you could have a turn in 5 minutes or ask me for help. Breaking things because you are angry and then lying about it cannot continue.” In this situation, you’d need to handle the anger and breaking things separate from the lying, as they are two distinct issues – both needing guidance and set boundaries.
Set boundaries around lying and disobedience. A child needs to know lying (or any other disobedience) is wrong before it is fair to discipline them for it. After talking to them, setting clear boundaries using these three principles:
State the infraction: “If you choose to lie…”
Make the timetable clear: “From now on…”
State clear consequence with a timetable: “You will not have screen time for one week.”
Make sure the consequence is appropriate for the infraction—neither too lenient nor too severe.
Watch their behaviors in similar situations if they try to lie. If you perceive there might be an issue, you might say, “Son, remember our talk about this? What is another option rather than getting angry, regretting it, and lying to cover it up?” Or, watch it happen and be ready to apply the consequences.
Consistently and gently follow through with the consequences you have set. Anytime you discipline, make sure you are not angry. Discipling when angry is abuse. Once you’ve checked your emotions, softly say, “Son, you lied, and ________ is your consequence for that lie.” Then, calmly follow through. Consistency is the key to them learning from any situation.
Young girl living with life consequences if her actions that could have been avoided if she had chosen honesty.
What kinds of consequences are appropriate? Every family has their own set of disciplines. Continue evaluating yours to see if they are effective for the temperaments of each of your children. Some need very mild, tender punishments. Other personalities need more uncomfortable disciplines to be motivated to make good choices.
On the scale of discipline, lying is one of the most serious infractions because its future life consequences can be so significant, and it is something that the Lord detests.
What does the Bible say about lying? The Bible is very clear. “The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in those who tell the truth.” Proverbs 12:22 We want the Lord to delight in us and our children, so we must teach our children to be honest.
Lying isn’t funny at any age. It is destructive to our relationships and our ability to teach our children to be honest people. Let’s become women the Lord delights in and model honesty to our children, helping them become people the Lord delights in also.
