Honesty of A Child Depends On Parenting

Being honest in something that you have done takes a lot of courage. This kind of honesty and truth is develops during the childhood where it mostly depends on the parenting and the approach of the family. Treating children by punishing and with anger forces their children to lie even more in order to avoid humiliation. This kind of approach to a child makes them afraid of telling the truth.

Two different examples has been set in order to show how a child denies, lies and fights back its parent when they have been pushed and been accused of lying or stealing. In the first scenario the mom pushes the child who has stolen a candy and says that he or she is lying and is going to be punished twice since they have both lied and stole. However, in the second scenario the mom says that ‘I see that you have some candy. But I didn’t buy that for you and your sister just told me that she saw you take it off the shelf when we were in the store.’ Instead of trying to defend him or herself the child looks down and the mom explains how important it is not to steal and to lie to each other. Also talking about how a family is a unity and should be honest to each other sets an example that other members are honest and in order to trust they should all be honest to each other. So, the child accepts what he did and says that he or she did not mean to do it. The mother then says how proud she is that he or she told the truth. In the second example the mother starts off with saying that she already knows that the child has stolen a candy which then leads her to speak about how important it is to be honest and not to lie.

Parents have a great impact on the character of a child. Honesty and truthfulness is thought in early stages. However, teaching honesty and truth in a healthy way has ways. First of all parents should tell their children how important honesty is in a family. Counting on each other and trusting is very important in order to become close. Parent should also talk about their close relationship with their own sisters and brothers and set an example of an honest relationship. Also a parent can defend, fight for the child in a certain situation. Another important aspect is not to jump right to punishing the child when they come upfront and tell that they have stole or done something wrong. This will lead the child not being honest the next time.  

This practice of being honest sets a healthy and a respectful relationship between the parents and the child. How the child gets this practice greatly depends on the approach of the parent. Bad characters come because of bad parenting. Stealing, lying being dishonest can become a practice and can cause disable activities during the adulthood. If it is taught the wrong way it can also break the family relationships. However the child lying or stealing makes me question that does it only depends on the parenting or does other circumstances trigger the child into lying such as the environment, social relationships and even biologic factors.

Zeynep Ercan