Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”. If Jesus is truth,
then it is clear as day that lying will separate us from God and not following
in the footsteps of His son, whom He has sent will be disastrous!
As parents, we work hard at teaching our children to be honest, yes? You
know, how we sometimes readily call out the phrase, “Honesty is the best
policy”- encouraging our children to tell the truth and to let us know what’s on
their minds.
Honesty is a virtue that can be taught to our children. Yet, it is not something
they finish learning at a specific age or skill level, such as learning to walk
at about one year old or learning to tie shoe laces at five or six and so
forth. Teaching honesty to children begins very young and will take different
forms and approaches to suit their age and level of understanding and is
continually nurtured along with their level of maturity.
Just like any virtue or values, teaching honesty by example is the most
effective. Young children copy or mimic their parents and therefore, a “do as I
do” approach is always more successful than a “do as I say, not as I do” approach.
We cannot deceive them, as children grow up they will begin to question these
discrepancies.
Perhaps sometimes we are the bigger culprit of dishonesty ourselves!
Maybe at that moment being honest can sometimes mean acknowledging or accepting
failures and we all know how hard it is to accept our own failures. Other times
it may be an attempt to protect our own child’s feelings, or to soften the blow
for our child’s disappointment, we as parents keep the truth from them or even
tell a white lie to others to protect them from feeling shame. But honestly, this does not help make
situations any better. What lessons are we teaching our children if we do not
accept failures or face realities? Are we, to begin with, guilty of demanding
or imposing nothing but perfection
from them, where quite often, we ourselves are unable to attain?
I recall an awkward experience with a parent whose response completely
mismatched her child’s pure and honest reply to his unsuccessful placement in
the school of his choice then. That incident brought embarrassment to the child
and he was dumbfounded. Sadly, a quote from author, Krista Delle Femine, had
its moment of reality right there, when “children lose their innocence the very
moment they are forced to make excuses for their parents’ bad behavior.”
We need our children to learn that “honesty” is very important in life,
as it leads to others seeing us as being “trustworthy” and friends will know
that they can rely on us. There are many verses in the Bible that teaches us
about honesty. To help us “grow” in honesty together with our children, in Luke
16: 10, we learn that “whoever can be trusted with very little can also be
trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be
dishonest with much.”
