Children Care Was Here

When your child lies to you, it hurts. As parents, it makes us angry and we take it personally. We feel like we can never trust our child again. Why does lying cause such anger, pain and worry for parents?

James: Parents are understandably very afraid of their children getting hurt and getting into trouble, but they have very little protection against these things as they send their kids out into the world. Kids learn from other kids and from the media, and it makes parents feel unsafe because they can’t control the information and ideas that are being presented to their children.

Let’s face it. Information isn’t just available to our kids; it’s injected into them. Bad ideas are pushed down our kid’s throats by their peers, by some adults, by the media. It’s hard for a parent to keep control of their kids when this is happening, and protect them from their own harmful impulses and dangerous outside influences.

Your Child and Honesty
Your kid’s honesty becomes the connector between what’s happening to him on the outside world and what happens at home. You need him to tell you honestly what happened today, so that you can honestly decide if that’s best for him.

You need to hear that information in order to decide if that’s going to help him meet his responsibilities now –and in the future. When parents don’t get the right information, they’re afraid they’ll make the wrong choices for their kids.

When your kid lies, you start to see him as “sneaky,” especially if he continues to lie to you. You feel that he’s going behind your back, that he’s undermining you. We begin to think that our kids are “bad.” We make the connection that if lying is bad, liars are bad. It’s just that simple.

Parents should hold their kids responsible for lying. But the mistake parents make is when they start to blame the kid for lying. It’s considered immoral to lie. But when you look at your kid like he’s a sneak and an operator who’s undermining your authority, it’s a slippery slope that starts with “You lie” and ends up at “You’re a bad person.”

I think that perception of your kid promotes more lying. If your child thinks you think he’s “bad,” he’s going to hide the truth from you even more, because he doesn’t want be bad. Even though they are lying, kids don’t want to disappoint their parents.

Q: Let’s look at it from the child’s perspective. What’s going in on a child’s mind when they lie to their parents?

James: Say you’re driving on the interstate and the speed limit is 65 mph. You know that if you drive 65 mph on the interstate, that’s the slowest anyone drives, and people fly by you, honk at you and call you names.

So you go 75 miles an hour…and a policeman stops you. He says, “Ms. Jones, how fast were you driving?” And most people say, “Sixty five.” Or, “I thought I was doing sixty five, officer, or maybe a little over sixty five.”

Why are people dishonest like that? Because they understand that driving fast is forbidden. But they don’t understand that it’s hurtful. We understand that it’s wrong to drive that fast and there are consequences. But we don’t understand that it really hurts anybody and that it puts people at risk.

It’s the same with kids. They know lying is forbidden. But they don’t see it as hurtful. Not the way that parents see it as hurtful.

So a kid will say, “I know it’s wrong that I ate a sugar snack when I’m not supposed to. But who does it hurt?” “I know it’s wrong that I traded my dried fruit for a Twinkie. But it doesn’t really hurt anybody. I can handle it. What’s the big deal?” That’s what the kid sees.

When they don’t see it as hurtful, there are two different value systems operating: the family’s value system that says this is forbidden and the kid’s value system that says if it’s not hurting anybody, what do you care? The kid rationalizes his actions and justifies his behavior with the idea that it doesn’t hurt anybody. The outcome is a dishonest

The personality of a person can be defined as a set of qualities, beliefs, feelings, thoughts, attitudes, emotions and ideas that distinguish him from others. Since very many years social scientists have been trying to find the reasons why people behave the way they do and how the personalities shape up. There is a wide spread belief that if the factors responsible for shaping up a person’s personality are controlled, right in the childhood itself, a person can have a desired, well rounded personality. The following Buzzle article discusses some beliefs similar to these by looking at how personality development in children takes place.

Social and Personality Development in Children

There are some theories which say that the personality of an individual is directly linked to genes. However, then why do siblings develop a completely different personality? No one has yet found an answer to this question. Then there is another theory which says that it is the environment to which a child is subjected that makes up his personality. A child’s parents, teachers, friends, acquaintances, his home environment, his school environment – all these have a great influence in shaping his personality. Lastly, the kind of experiences a person has, as a child, teen or a young adult, play a major role in determining his reactions, his feelings, his emotional make-up and the way he behaves.

Parental Influence…
Out of all the factors responsible for personality development in children, parental influence is the most important one. The way the parents behave with the child, how much he is allowed to socialize, the kind of culture he is subjected to by them, and the emotional make-up of his parents, all these have a great bearing on the child’s mental growth. In early childhood, all children ape their parent’s mannerisms. Children learn a lot about socialization from the way their parents interact with their friends, neighbors, acquaintances, etc. If the parents are social, the same traits will most probably be imbibed in the children. Thus, parents should take care to become good role models and provide the child with the best environment, where he gets ample opportunities to develop his personality.

Home Environment…
The first time a child begins to understand his emotions, is through his mother. A child learns about love, care, support and help, through her. Thereafter, he develops various kinds of emotions, both positive as well as negative. Happiness, fear, anxiety, jealousy, anger and shyness – a child starts displaying all these. Again, it is up to the parents to make sure that the child incorporates the positive emotions in his personality and stays away from the negative ones. A child needs both his parents, mother as well as father to develop his personality. An absentee father or someone who stays away from home for a long time, can have a negative influence on the child. To ensure that a child turns out to be a confident, positive person, there are some other things that parents should avoid, such as being too authoritative, trying to discipline the child in excess, scolding the child often, punishing him severely, criticizing the child, discouraging him, comparing him with others and giving preference to one child over the other one.

School Environment…
Besides the home environment, a child’s school environment too plays a major role in shaping a child’s personality. Once a child starts going to school, he learns how to interact and deal with his peers. He comes to know how to engage in “playing” according to the rules and regulations. He gets educated, learns how to read, write and communicate effectively. A child’s personality is greatly influenced by the way he is treated at school, both by his teachers as well as his peers.

Culture…
Influence of culture in personality and social development cannot be ignored too. For instance, a child brought up in western countries is taught to be individualistic and competitive, while children brought up in Asian, African and South American countries are taught to be cooperative.

According to psychiatrist Erik Erikson, there are various phases that a child passes through such as infancy, toddlerhood, preschool and school age. Each of these stages has it’s own share of problems and challenges, which a child has to overcome, with his parent’s assistance, to turn out to be a well developed personality.