by Rex Fisher, PhD
Whether you believe it or not, your kids lie to you. Let me share a personal story.
I remember playing cowboys and Indians, and cops and robbers when I was a kid in the early 1960’s. A cap gun was a central prop for those games. If you were born too late to know what a cap gun is, it was loaded with a paper strip that had small dots of mildly explosive powder along its length. With each trigger pull, the strip advanced and the toy gun’s hammer fell on a fresh dot of powder. You would be rewarded with a satisfying BANG! Without the caps, the gun would only go click, click, click, instead of BANG, BANG, BANG.
I was at the store with my parents one day and asked them to buy some more caps. After being told, “No”, I put some in my pocket anyway and secretly took them home. My brother and I got up very early the next morning to play with them before Mom and Dad awoke. But our underdeveloped brains did not think to go outside where we would not be heard. Instead, we shot them in the house!
As you can probably imagine, we woke our parents and I had to explain where the caps came from. “Petey gave them to me.” My dad could have taken that answer at face value and let it drop. But, he knew all kids lie to their parents in order to stay out of trouble. If you think your kids never lie to you, and you always take their side in a dispute, you need to rethink that. ALL kids lie to their parents, even yours.
My dad got dressed and took me down the street to Petey’s house. His dad answered the door. “Sergeant Wickham, my son told me that Petey gave him some caps. I’d like to verify that.” “Sure, Lieutenant Fisher. I’ll go get him.” Well, Petey denied giving me the caps, which was true of course. I remember having to earn the money to pay for them, then going with my dad to confess to the store manager and give him the money.
Are you willing to make the effort to seize upon a teaching moment like that when your kids lie to you? Do you spend enough time with your kids to even recognize when such an opportunity presents itself? If so, you are a rare breed of parent — one who actually takes part in their children’s lives in today’s busy world.
Of course, even diligent parents have children that sometimes begin acting out without any obvious reason. Family counseling may be just the thing to identify and resolve the cause of that behavior. Even good parents can’t always do it alone. Let Terri help!
(Rex is married to Terri Fisher, a marriage and family therapist who provides equine-assisted counseling and family counseling in Itasca, Texas.)