What’s the best way to help kids be honest?  There are two things that are critical for you to do as a parent to allow this to happen.  1) Make sure it’s emotionally safe for them to tell the truth.  2) You have to be honest with your kids at all times as well. Neither is always easy to do, but they are the secret sauce in raising honest kids.         

My starting thoughts about wanting to help my kids be comfortable telling the truth came from an unexpected place – when my oldest was three and my middle just born, I thought about when they would be teenagers and making the dumb decisions that teenagers make, particularly around safety.  I wanted them to feel completely comfortable calling me at any point throughout the day or night to ask for help or to go pick them up, and know they would not get in any kind of trouble.  For whatever had occurred.  They would not even get a stern voice, just a “thank you”.  And you know what?  That absolutely happened. Dumb decisions happened, but at some point during the dumb decision, they realized that something was unsafe, and they called me in to help them out.  I am so grateful for having that trust and also allowing them the opportunity to figure out how to deal with an unsafe situation without any of the terrible consequences that can occur.

So, we started early in preparation for the dreaded teenage years.  I looked for those opportunities where one of my sons had done something – spilled a drink, drew on the french door with a Sharpie (nailing every surface, glass, wood, and metal), swallowed a coin, put a small rock in their ear, etc.  If they told the truth, I would thank them and give them a lot of praise, even if I was mad about what had happened.  Sometimes I had to work really hard to swallow my reaction, because at the end of the day, that is my feelings, not theirs, and the goal was to help them tell the truth.  If I reacted badly, they would be getting the message that telling the truth was not safe.  They had to be getting a warm, positive feeling from being truthful, even if I was not feeling warm and fuzzy at that moment.

The hardest time I had with that was when Son2 was about 5.  He found some scissors and then found some fabric to try them out on.  Unfortunately, that fabric was my favorite pair of pants. When I found him happily cutting away, I did not have the best reaction at first – I definitely gave a shocked and angry response.  But when I asked him if he was cutting up my pants, and he answered “yes”, I had to shove that down and just say thank you for telling me the truth.  I then left the house for a few hours to cool down and to try to find another pair of those pants.  No luck there, unfortunately, but I was in a better place when I returned.  I still have the pants, because now it’s a funny memory.  

Every single time they tell the truth, it’s an opportunity to reinforce a positive experience with that.  There are times when I took that opportunity and praised what I thought was the truth being told, but only to find out that it was not the truth.  That would lead to a calm discussion about why it’s important to tell the truth and to let them know I was disappointed that they didn’t tell the truth that time.  No need to yell.  “Disappointed” is SO much more powerful than yelling.  

Son2 was my biggest challenge in helping him tell the truth.  He seemed to reach for the lie much more readily than his brothers ever did.  The rock in the year?  Yep, that was him.  He told me about the rock when he got home from school because it was bothering him.  I asked how it got there, and he said it “jumped in”.  Hmmm… Those are some mighty jumpy rocks on the playground.  I didn’t challenge him on it, just kept asking clarifying questions about it.  After a visit to the pediatrician for an uncomfortable washing out of his ear canal to remove it, the truth came out, but not for a couple of weeks.  I just kept dropping questions here and there about it in a gentle way until he finally fessed up.  He was curious and wanted to see what it felt like.  When he did confess the truth, I let him know I was proud of him and said I was sorry it was uncomfortable to remove.  NOT as a comment to make him feel worse, but truly as an empathetic statement about how uncomfortable that experience was.  

We had a few more years of those kinds of things with Son2, but by high school, he had become an extremely honest person.  He is still at 28 now.  And yes, there were two times I got the “can you come get me?” calls from him.  Phew!

So, the other part of the honesty secret sauce?  You have to tell the truth yourself.  Kids learn from us.  They watch what we do and emulate it.  They also know when something doesn’t feel right, even if something isn’t said out loud.  You may believe you are fooling them, but you really are not. They can sense when there is a secret.

I can tell you that from my experience growing up in my family.  There were a lot of things that were not talked about – my brother’s DUI, my sister’s learning challenges, my dad’s infidelities, my grandfather’s alcoholism.  It was brushed under the rug, and I didn’t know how to process these things alone, so I repressed what I was feeling.  This is something I have had to address again and again in my adult life because emotional habits were formed that were not healthy.  I was taught to repress things, and that has never served me well.

I wanted to be different with my kids, so I took the approach that when they asked a question, I answered it honestly.  If they were asking, they were ready for the information.  The funniest moment of that came up when my oldest was eight and I was pregnant with Son3.  He was interested in the ultrasound, and so he came with me to an appointment.  After the ultrasound, as I was wiping the goo off my belly, Son1 asked, “How did the baby get in there?”  Clearly, he was ready for the information, and so I answered honestly.  In the OB’s office.  He still remembers that and gets a laugh about it.

An unexpected moment came up with Son3 when he was about ten.  If you read my blog post As the Mom of a Son with a Critical Medical Issue, you would know that Son3 has a rare heart defect that requires many open-heart surgeries throughout his life.  The first was when he was 6 weeks old, and the second was at 6 years old. As he got older, he would ask questions about his heart and the surgery experience, trying to process things.  He was asking about his first surgery and what that entailed.  He then commented, “Well, at least I didn’t die.”  Well, I could have left that alone, but the truth was that he did die briefly during surgery.  His heart had stopped when they opened up his chest, and they had to restart it using internal paddles. I knew he would need that information to fully process his experience, so I answered, “Well, actually, you did die for a moment and they brought you back.”  He was shocked.  “I died? I DIED? I died…”  By the next day, his ten-year-old bravado had kicked in, and he was proudly proclaiming it.  He was processing the information in a healthy way.

Now I don’t tell my sons everything, and I have certainly been careful about what I tell them based on their developmental stage, but I have been honest every time, and they know that.  When they asked about what I did as a teenager that was unsafe, I told them.  I know so many parents who pretend that they didn’t do the things they did in their youth because they think that if they pretend they were making safe decisions at all times, their kids will choose to be safe.  I find that it’s often the opposite.  The kids know it’s not honest information and will inevitably go try the dumb thing themselves.  I went with the approach that if I answered honestly, told them my dumb mistakes, they would have some more information about some things to try and avoid them themselves.  It didn’t always work, but I would say it sure helped. 

Kids who have been helped to learn to be honest when they are young usually become honest adults. And that’s really the name of the game – we are helping our kids become well-rounded and (hopefully) well-functioning adults.