On reinforcing the values of telling the truths in young children, off of the Front Page Sections, translated…
What to do when children lie? The experts analyzed, that children lie for TWO primary reasons: first, to prevent parents from worrying or to not get punished, second, to gain the parents’ attention or verbal accolades. The studies in psychology found, that to prevent children from lying, telling children stories of how being honest is rewarded, or giving the children positive reinforcements when they tell the truth works WAY better than punishment or verbally reprimanding children when they le.
Children lying is a HUGE taboo in a lot f parents’ minds. The expert in parenting, Peng analyzed, that the parents believed that as the children were lying, they all fly into a panic, and tried hard to get to the truths. And once the confirmations of children lying is made, the parents aren’t relieved, instead, it’s like when the verdicts are read, their expectations of their young being “good children”, destroyed, they’d not made time to understand what drove children to lie, and started verbally, or physically reprimanding the behaviors of lying of the children.
Peng said, children lie for two reasons, first, when they’d done something wrong, like accidentally breaking something fragile, not done their chores because they were too lazy t, as the kids realized that the punishments are going to be harsh, they are surely to lie, to get away from being, punished. Another scenario is when children try to get the adults’ attention, the children may boast, for instance, they may lie about what sort of items they have in their homes, or lie about the skills they may not have acquired, to gain the applauses. And if the parents only scolded them, and not helped them become more confident, to teach them the right way to get people to notice them, the kids will keep on using the exaggerated claims to get everybody’s attention.
The clinical psychologist Chen showed that the best way to prevent children from lying is NOT to enforce punishment when the parents found out the children were lying, but to positively reinforce children when they tell the truths, for instance, “baby, the happiest moment of our lives is when you tell the truth, instead of lying about something. When you work hard to be honest, I will be very please with you.”
Chen said, that a university in Canada conducted an experiment, having a group of children hear the story, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”, how the results of lying is tragic; the other children were told the story of how Washington chopped down his father’s cherry tree, on how being honest gained Washington the understanding, and rewards. The results showed, that the children who heard the stories about Washington chopping down the cherry tree, they were three times more willing to tell the truth than the children who were told the story of “Boy Who Cried Wolf”.
And if you catch your own children lying, Peng suggested the parents to “carefully check the facts”, otherwise, the opposite of the desired behaviors may happen. If the children had accumulated the instances of getting accused of something they didn’t do once or twice, then, the trusts between the parents and child is broken, and the child who was deemed as a “liar” will lose one’s own self-respect, and denied the preciousness of being honest, because, whether or not if the child’s done it, the parents would believe that s/he is lying.
And so, this, is how to teach your children to be honest, and trust is the primary issues, if your children trust you and if you’d instilled in them to always tell the truths, and chances are, that they won’t, lie to you. Children need to trust that they are safe, before they’re able to, speak freely.