Lying

How did she learn to lie?

We went out of our way to always tell her the truth, even when we knew it would result in an hour of protest and tantrum. We never made up stories about the bogeyman coming to get her if she does not eat her food.

When other adults told her ‘lies’ to make her act a certain way, I always intercepted; looked the adult in the eye and said- “…no no, s/he is joking honey, of course you are not going to get a shot by a cruel nurse if you do not enter the car immediately…” I mean it is crazy the type of lies adults tell kids to ‘make them behave’. We don’t realize how we mess up their world with these scary stories: we tell them about the cruel nurse giving a shot, then the next time we are the doctor’s office, we try to console her, “you will see honey it won’t hurt at all!!!”

I am a strong believer that nurture and nature/fitrat make-up our personalities, and the influence of each changes based on our circumstances and the character trait at hand. So I am pretty sure that in case of lieing nurture did not have a significant influence for our daughter. But she still does try it time to time.

The thing is she only lies when she knows that she will be scolded for doing something wrong. So when she lies (e.g. I did not do it, the teddy bear did!), I ask her kindly again, reminding her that if she tells the truth she won’t be scolded. So even if I would have scolded her for that particular action, I try to control my reaction and respond to her gentler, softly explaining why what she did was wrong and how great it was that she told me the truth…

I hope this work in the long run and encourages her to always tell the truth, no matter how unpleasant the consequences might be…