Truth is a very interesting thing.  As an adult you know you should only speak the truth and it is very important to be in truth.  As a kid, it is not that simple.  Sometimes the truth is not your friend and it can get you into trouble when you speak it.  Therein becomes an intersting dilemma for a parent.

You teach your kids to always tell the truth but sometimes you end of punishing them when they tell you the truth because they did something wrong in the first place that made them lie.

My son has a behavior chart at school and brings it home to me every day so I can see how he did. It shows if he was prepared, raising his hand, acted age appropriate, etc.  So the other day he told me he had a perfect day.  He did not show me the chart. When he was going to bed and saying his prayers and his good nights to me, he said, “I can’t take it anymore!  I did not have a perfect day. I had one miss.  I was unprepared first period, I didn’t have anything to write with.”  Then he let out a huge sigh.  He was feeling such stress from keeping that lie that he just burst and he couldn’t take it anymore.

So I used the experience as a teaching moment. I did not punish him for lying to me although we did talk about it.  I told him that I understand he will have days when he is not perfect.  I also understand he wants to earn his baseball stickers at the end of the week for a good week at school.  A good week is not 5 perfect days.  A good week is doing your best and trying your hardest.  Not having a writing utensil is an easy thing to fix. We decided that every morning he’ll take out his accordian, put in a pen and pencil and his agenda so he’ll have everything right there in one place. We talked about lying and feeling guilt and stress and how important it is to be truthful.

It was a great opportunity to learn a very important lesson and if it didn’t happen we wouldn’t have had that chance.  Remember to find those teaching moments in any parenting opportunity you can, before you know it they’ll be too old for them!