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Why fib to your kids?
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The biggest challenge is to be honest and make your children fall in line
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PHOTO: K.R. DEEPAK
Right is might Beware, children learn wrong things fast
Your child won’t eat dinner, won’t sleep, won’t do his homework. How do you manage? You could land a well-aimed whopper on his back. But that’s barbaric. You do the next best thing. Tell a clean lie with a straight face. ̶
0;So ja beta, nahi to Gabbar ayega.” “Sappidu, illena poochandi varuvaan.” We threaten to call the police and the poochandi for the same purpose.
We feed children fibs along with Farex. We administer regular doses of falsehood through their school years. “I was a model student, never got punished.” In a nudge-and-wink conspiracy, we hide the truth so often that we don’t even recognise what we say as lies. No wonder children rebel when they turn teens and discover the truth — “my parent lies to me”.
No lies, says Prema Bhat, psychologist. “Children learn the wrong things fast! If parents lie, they should be prepared to get a dose of their own medicine later as children grow up. Unless parents are consistent in their behaviour, the child will resort to lies.”
Wait, it’s not always practical, parents throw up their hands. “I wasn’t buying the GI Joe my four-year-old pulled from a shop rack,” said Sunita. “If I had told him it was a waste, he would have thrown a fit.” Instead she said: It is for older children, the girl at the check-out won’t allow it. No screaming, no embarrassment, no punishment.”
“When I was growing up, my parents frustrated me on long road trips by answering the question ‘When will we get there?’ with ‘In 5 minutes,’ every single time I asked,” said a mom. “I eventually realised I would only get the answer she thought I wanted to hear.” She would be absolutely truthful to her own children. “Unfortunately, all my good intentions came to a hasty end at the hands of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, who conspired to make a liar out of me. When it came to a choice between the magic of childhood and the clinical virtuousness of truth, it was a no contest.”
The right approach
Is it always correct to go straight, a dad asked. “My six-year-old does art work. Not all of it is good. I tell her they are. You could hardly categorise it as a lie. It is not for a personal gain. It is to protect the child.”
In the last episode of “Kannamoochi Re Re” (Simran Thirai), Simran portrays the criminal dad as a hero to spare the child from trauma, our commonest reason for lying to children: to create a warm, safe environment. At what point do you tell them the truth about the city street, the polluted world, the predator outside? Calming lies might take away the sense of urgency from the topic, says a teacher. Aren’t we all trained to ignore issues?
We tell them swear words are wrong, even when we tolerate them in adults. We sugar-coat death — too horrifying, won’t understand it anyway. We step back from talking about sex; because we feel children should be kept innocent, we have deep taboos about it, we don’t know how to impart that knowledge intelligently. We have a hologram of what children should be like, and it is far removed from what we expect of other adults.
We train our children to tell lies for social fitting. “Say thank you, honey,” when they are served a dish they dislike or receive a crappy gift. Imagine this: “Payasam is yucky!” We encourage them to tell the teacher they were unwell and couldn’t do the home-work. Not, “Tell her the truth and face the consequences.” Can you blame teens calling from a mall to say they are in college? We hide our shortcomings from children. It is more important they respect us than they know the truth. What makes us think they are dumb?
“What you tell your children must be tailored to age, stage of development, and occasion,” says Dr. Suma Balagopal, psychiatrist. “Telling a six-year-old the Tooth Fairy left a present, and a 12-year-old ‘Grandma’s gone away for a little while’ aren’t the same.” Deviating from the truth to protect children from a harsh reality, to salvage hurt feelings, bolster self-esteem are part of the protective role of a parent, she argues. “But a good rule of thumb is not to lie about things that are governed by parental behaviour — like threats that are never carried out, promises never kept, commitments not met. Also, “white lies that make a child feel better are fine but as they hit the pre-teen years, children are discerning of the world and resent being fobbed off by adults.” Maintaining credibility is one of the biggest challenges parents have to face, she points out, “but there still remains a role for lies of omission (eg. hiding details of marital discord) that serve a protective function.”
GEETA PADMANABHAN
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