A lot of parenting gurus tell you that honesty isn’t always the best policy when it comes to your kids. I’m not talking about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. I’m talking about life. As a parent, you’re faced with the responsibility of presenting life to your children and preparing them to embrace it when the time comes for them to leave the nest. Being honest with them isn’t always easy because let’s face it: life is scary.
Between terrorism and war, child-predators and school bullies, sometimes I’d rather crawl into a hole with her and hide, than expose my daughter to the world. Being honest, we run the risk of alienating our children from society, creating anxious mini-agoraphobics who won’t even walk to the corner store for a carton of milk if we lay the truth on too thick. If it’s too thin, they enter the world green and naive, practically laying their necks on the chopping block and motioning for the executioner to bring the axe down.
When the Squeenager was about two years old, a twelve-year-old girl was abducted from a neighboring town. Someone just walked right into the girl’s home in the middle of the night, took her and disappeared into the darkness. No one saw or heard a thing. The parents, who were divorced, fell under extreme scrutiny. Media and authorities leaned heavy on the father, thinking he took her somewhere and hid her to get back at his ex-wife, who had recently started a new relationship.
Authorities searched for her for months, but by the time they found her it was too late. Her body was so badly decomposed there was no evidence to lead them back to the killer. Two years later, the girl’s uncle hung himself and left a note about how sorry he was for what he’d done.
In a world where you can’t even trust your own family members, you have to be brutally honest with your kids. It sucks because from the minute you feel the first signs of life during pregnancy, you want nothing more than to shield that life from the horrors of the world. I worked really hard to maintain my daughter’s innocence when she was younger. Maybe I shielded her a little from the outside world, but I also talked to her like she was a person from the start. And when she didn’t understand, I encouraged her to question because that’s what kids do. That’s what well-rounded adults do.
The same parenting gurus who might tell you honesty isn’t always the best policy would probably have hung me in town square had they heard the answers I often gave to important life questions. I just couldn’t imagine lying to her, no matter how much it hurt me to think I might scare her. I metered the bad with the good, as well, showing her as often as I could that there is just as much light and love in the world as there is rot and ruin. She turns fifteen this Friday, and as she crawls closer toward that fateful day that she’s on her own, a part of me hopes that she’ll be a little street wiser because I was honest with her.
On another note, the fact that I have been honest with her has taught her to be honest with me. She talks to me, asks me for advice, and considers my opinion before making important life decisions. She doesn’t always follow my advice, which is good because unless she makes mistakes she won’t learn anything, but it’s nice to know she trusts me enough to ask me what I think.
“Because you know things,” she told me, “and you’re always right.”
Which is ironic and funny because I really don’t know anything for sure. Like her, I’m just a girl out in the world taking life one day at a time and hoping like hell I’m making the right choices.
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Comments
Chris Bowsman
January 12th, 2010 - 5:39:52 PM
My oldest is 7, so I'm facing more of these questions each day. Recently, he learned that my wife and I both used to smoke. He was surprised (and a bit disappointed), but accepted it and moved on. Would I rather have told him no? Sure, but what would happen when he finds an old picture of one of us with a cigarette? Now, not only was I a smoker, but I'm a liar, too, and maybe he starts questioning whether or not he can trust me. I think the trick is age-appropriate honesty. If your daughter was 4, you wouldn't tell her about the serial rapist who's on the loose. However, at 14, hell yeah she needs to know about that.
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Nikki
January 12th, 2010 - 7:41:18 PM
I loved this article. My mother never held anything from me, and I think I'm a smarter person for it. I learned early on that knowledge is power, and it has taught me that if something scares me- learning about it will help me feel better because I'll be better informed
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Patrick
January 12th, 2010 - 8:04:02 PM
Excellent article, very, very good. It is very hard to be honest about everything, but important to be upfront with kids. You hit it right on the head.
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Nobilis
January 13th, 2010 - 5:18:27 AM
Our policy is to be honest but not always completely forthcoming. At fifteen (nearly sixteen? ergh!) the twins can handle most of the truth. Spinderfly is already pretty cynical, and when Nitrolad hears about evil or injustice he's much more likely to become angry than fearful. He can be a regular white knight, ready to ride out into the world and right all its wrongs. Sometimes I think we give our kids less credit than they are due, for being resilient.
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Cindy
January 13th, 2010 - 6:24:30 AM
So true, so true. Communication is the key to trust and respect. She has that for you and that is a real blessing.
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Kody Boye
January 13th, 2010 - 6:24:58 AM
I think that, in a nutshell, parents should be talking to their kids instead of trying to avoid the more brutally-honest aspects of the world. I remember that, because my parents were always worried about how I would react to certain things, they never explained them to me. I knew the explicit details of sex by the time I was nine, so that goes to show you what can happen when you let the kids mentor themselves. Honestly though, I don't think it's incredibly wrong to let certain things slide until later in life. But, like you said, what happens if they end up too green? I myself ended up like that and NEVER wanted to leave the house, then ended up panicking one night and driving 400+ miles to Denver when I'd never even driving ten miles to the next town up by myself. Using myself as an example, I think it's better to give children a more realistic approach to the world, and let them explore when they're willing or wanting to do so. I myself had my own share of disappointments in my early teenage years because I was too secluded in my maturity, so I've had to learn the hard ropes fairly quickly over the last seven years. Regardless, though, I think honesty is the best policy you can give someone. No point in lying about the birds and the bees if they're going to go out and learn it themselves--physically, with another partner.
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Drew Beatty
January 13th, 2010 - 6:44:38 AM
This is an issue we are still grappling with, especially with our 4 year old, who is very imaginative, and prone to nightmares. Just yesterday he was asking questions about a news article my wife was reading about a mother who died when she was hit by a car while walking her baby in a stroller. The hardest part is answering his questions about what happens next.
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Laura
January 13th, 2010 - 6:51:07 AM
Well said. At three DD came home from play group crying about "stranger danger". Had to push the good and beautiful for a long time. It's a hard balancing act.
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David Sobkowiak
January 13th, 2010 - 7:54:06 AM
Great article. Having an 8yr old daughter and 5 yr old son, we approach things differently for each. As Chris mentioned, we're not telling them about the sex offenders in town, but we do emphasize of staying alert, knowing their surroundings and staying in a safe area. It's been hard to always tell them (and mostly her) the truth about everything, and I'd be lying if I said I had. Sometimes it was easier in a pinch, and luckily it hasn't come back to bite me as it wasn't a big issue. I think honesty being the best policy with your kids allows them to slowly take in life and its ups and downs, and shows them that you really are there in good times and bad. it helps them to know that they can come to you with a tough situation and be honest and helps them to see that there are better ways to deal with those situations.
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mimi
January 13th, 2010 - 9:34:40 AM
Like the say raising children does not come with an instruction book, One can only do their best and pray that they go out into the world with good strong shoulder to weather the bad storms that will come their. Hopefully what you taught them will stick with them when they come to make choices on there own. Very good article and enjoyed reading it
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