True Or False Is Not So Much A Matter Of Morality

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

When our children begin to lie to us, for most adults it is a signal to attack in the fight for truth and honesty. The child who lied to us is subjected to successively or randomly: interrogation, shame, pressure, threats and active attempts to find out "the whole truth." And the saddest thing is that parents are absolutely convinced that the child himself is to blame for the lie, and his “vicious” behavior must be eradicated immediately.

It is important to understand that children's lies, most often (with the exception of a certain mental pathology) are the consequences of improperly built parent-child relationships. And therefore, first of all, parents should ask themselves the question: “What are we doing wrong?”, And at least try to look at this incident as a symptom.

When a child has nothing to hide? When he understands, guesses, and even better knows from his own experience that no matter what he shares with his close adults, he will receive help, support, clarification. They will not attack him with accusations, insults, they will not begin to apply various punitive sanctions to him, and first of all, they will stop him if he has violated any rules and laws, they will try to listen, understand. They will help him to deal with what he has done, and together they will be able to realize what led the child in a difficult situation for him, they will help to expiate his guilt or make a mistake.

Blame and shame usually make the situation worse. Because in response to an overreaction, you want to hide even more carefully. When a child regularly, or at least several times in a row, met with an inadequate reaction of the parent (in addition to the above, it can be: emotions of a severely upset, crushed adult, his strongly affective, inadequate state of the event). Then he is forced to hide what happened, not only in order to "hide from punishment", which in itself is understandable, especially if the punishment is coming to be inadequate, but also in order to somehow cope with the stress that he is forced to do. to experience alone. After all, so at least he will not have to answer for the feelings of his parent, who has fallen into passion. That is, to everything that happened to him, to process also the consequences of his appeal for help, in many respects excessive, and not helping him to understand himself.

I tell parents who are outraged by the lies of their own children: "children are lying, pressed against the wall." This means that your relationship is such that he cannot tell you the truth, because he understands: it will only get worse. And to scold a child just because he is trying to take care of himself is at least short-sighted, especially if he no longer hopes to see support and support in his parents in a difficult situation.

Most parents, in a pharisaic way, in my opinion, wrap up children's lies in a package of some kind of strange morality. Of course, a lie is a lie. But adults often behave as if they themselves are always crystal honest, and never lie in situations where it is also important for them to save their face, it is scary to reveal some difficult truth, or they simply do not want to share something unseemly with everyone, to expose yourself in an unfavorable light.

At the same time, the desire of their children to consider something as their own business, not to let anyone into their intimate space and not to initiate into it those whom they do not trust, for some reason is considered a great “sin”. And the indignant exclamation of such a parent "Don't you trust us?" considered possible, although they themselves have done absolutely nothing to build such trust. Especially if they did not respect his psychological and personal boundaries, did not understand, did not believe, did not give the opportunity to figure it out on their own.

For obvious reasons, children of overcontrolling parents try to hide and deceive most of all. Those for whom a thorough knowledge of the other is a necessary means of dealing with their own anxiety. Or those who are very scared of childhood mistakes, and therefore they like to educate according to the principle: "so that it was discouraging" and "so that you remember once and for all …".

They are the ones who are ready to dig, reveal the truth. They are the ones who turn out pockets, check desk drawers, read children's diaries and notes. And, alas, most often they do not understand, do not realize that this completely destroys trust, intimacy, destroys relationships, and makes the child only more skillfully lie, hide, keep the remains of the important and intimate away from parental eyes. In such control and violation of borders, there is no imaginary "good" for the child, there is no teaching of moral rules and norms, rather, teaching the opposite: how to open the boundaries of other people by fraudulent means (that is, to climb where you were not allowed), extremely high the parent's anxiety and his irrepressible attempts to control and maintain parental authority, which he has already lost along with the loss of trust.

If you want the child to share his experiences or events with you, then you should learn to understand him, help him deal with the events that have occurred, and if you will not hide your significant own experiences from him. At the same time, it is important to be careful, and to tell the truth, to formulate it in such a form that the child will be able to perceive and digest in accordance with his age capabilities.

If you are getting a divorce, it is important to tell your child about it as soon as possible. But you should not devote him to the details of how "your daddy left us unfortunate people and went to a young bitch" or other details of intimate life. It is worth telling him that the parents will now live separately, because their relationship has ended, they have ceased to love each other. But they both love him very much and will always love him because he is their child. He will visit his other parent in his other home, or in his other family. It is also important to say that the child is not to blame for this breakup, and this is their adult decision.

It is also worth talking with the child about other significant events in the family, about the death of loved ones, about their illnesses, and upcoming changes. You can not hide your feelings at the same time, but tell the child that we will cope with our experiences. For example, "your grandmother died, we are all very sad and crying, we will miss her, but we can handle it." "Your grandfather is in the hospital, he has a serious operation, we are all very worried, worried, but we very much hope that everything will go well."

This is a common parental illusion that if a child does not know about some events and experiences in the family, then it is safer for him. In fact, children always feel the emotional field of the family, especially negative when someone is crying, upset, tense, in grief. He does not know how to explain, interpret it, and depending on his picture of the world, he explains it in his own way. And very often in darker colors than it really is. For example, "my grandmother has gone somewhere, probably it was me who misbehaved." Or "my parents divorced because of me because I didn't listen."

So truth or falsehood is not a question of morality, it is a question of respect, trust and the ability to consider the other as truly close.