truth

Top Ten Reasons to Never Lie to Children

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A small boy playing

Every time I say, “Never lie to your kids,” someone responds with, “What about Santa, and the Easter Bunny? What about playing pretend?” I sometimes think people like to stir things up, and create difficulties where there are none.

Lies and fantasy are not the same thing, and we know that when we are not trying to be obtuse. Lies are ugly. Lies are self-serving, meant to gain an advantage for the liar. Lies hurt, and cause damage and resentment. Everyone has, at some point in their lives, been hurt by a lie. Remember that feeling, because it is not something we wish for our progeny.

There is a real difference between lies and pretend. Pretend is a game everyone has agreed to play. No one was ever hurt by being brought into the club to help keep the secret of Santa.

The other side of the coin is that well meaning parents want to protect their kids from some of the less magical aspects of life, and lie in order to guard their child’s innocence and happiness. We forget that there is a price tag on the lie that will come due when it is found out. The result of “Sure we can afford that toy,” and “Grandma just went on a long trip,” is a lack of trust, and panic when Aunt Judy goes on her next trip.

The solution to this is simple. Don’t tell them things you don’t want them to know. Tell them they are too young, or you’ll have to think about that, or just “No.”

Don’t lie. Because…

  1. …you’ll get caught. You have to keep track of all of your lies; your munchkin only has to remember what you said. You are the most important person in their lives. They watch you and pay attention. They will notice.
  2. …you don’t want your child to lie to you, and fair is fair.
  3. …kids incorporate anything a parent does into their own self image. If their parent is a liar, then so must they be.
  4. …they need to trust you on matters of safety. If you have never lied to them they will know you are telling the truth when you say, “drugs are dangerous,” or “random sex will hurt you.”
  5. …kids thrive when they feel secure. They need to know they can count on their parents, and have a safe base from which to launch their lives. Lies will erode that security.
  6. …it is much easier to have self respect, and take pride one’s accomplishments, when one has honestly accomplished them. As you go, so will they follow.
  7. …you want your children to succeed in both their work and their relationships; a habit of honesty will help in both.
  8. …the respect of your children must be earned, not granted as an automatic part of being a parent. Lying tarnishes that respect.
  9. …when they see you deserving of and expecting respect as an honest, trustworthy person, so will they demand respect in their own lives and relationships.
  10. …last, they can trust that they are wonderful and capable of anything, because you told them so, and you never lie.

Anonymity and Denial in the Twitterverse

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turtle2-01Playwright Tom Stoppard said, “Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.”

I am old enough to be amazed by social media, with its multitude of words and pictures. It did not exist when I was new. If we wanted enlightenment, we went to the library or read the Post. By the time we found our information, the events were already in the past. We knew people of different cultures existed, and events happened, but it was knowledge that came at a distance, blurred by its time-consuming transformation into letters and pictures.

When we curious children wanted to see what a woman looked like without her clothes, we stole our parent’s National Geographic and leafed through it for pictures of deepest Africa. Kennedy and Lennon were shot, but there were no cell phone videos or instant interviews. The stories unfolded over weeks, with time to adjust and get a little distance.

Social media now comes with immediacy and savage intensity. People’s lives are flayed open and placed on the screen for my perusal. If I presume to know anything about that woman in Africa, she can knock me upside the head minutes later, because she is in reality just a hairsbreadth away. If I pretend to wisdom, the whole world can judge me and let me know where they think are my errors in judgement.

This brilliant transparency should make us more authentic, more determined to write nothing that we would not stand behind to our deaths. We should claim our words without reservation. These words. are. me. Sadly, from a place of weakness and fear it can instead make us deny what we know, as we buffer our truth so as not to be responsible for it.

We write, “Tweets do not replace medical advice, retweets are not to be considered an endorsement.” We backtrack, and pad ourselves against risk. The most powerful thing we can do – put our thoughts into words for other people to see – we disclaim and weaken with “tweets are not meant to be advice.”

Of course they are! What would be the point, otherwise?

If we give thought to and write words down then they need to be true. Words are sacred. We record our words in the hopes that they will “nudge the world a little.” If our words are our truth then they have earned our faith: we have to stand behind them with our names and our identities.

Weakening our words by buying into a fear of lawsuits and judgement is a betrayal of our selves; it costs us a piece of our souls. Our words are us and denying them, even in a small part, allows decay to eat away at our own value.

Conversely, since we wrote those words with our very own minds and hands we should never, in the rush to say something, write down what we know is not truth: those words will also follow us through our lives. People sometimes feel that they can be nasty, petty, or judgmental on the internet because they are anonymous. They can twist the facts just a little to make their point. We must realize that there is no such thing as true anonymity. Even if no one else ever knows who wrote those words, you yourself do.

Persian poet Hafez wrote, “The words you speak become the house you live in.” Write only words that have a strong foundation and the solidity of truth, so that your house is yours alone and can hold up to the hurricane force winds of opinion. Hafez’s words are as true on the internet today as they were in the fourteenth century in ink on paper. Such is the power of words. Believe in them, and in your self.