Don't Lie to Me - How to Get Your Teens to be Truthful With You

“Parents teach their children to lie by the way they react to the truth.”

   When parents complain to me that their children often lie to them, I say it’s probably because they’ve taught them to lie. These parents look at me like I’m crazy when I say that. But it’s true. Children are taught to lie by the way some parents react to the truth.

   It starts when they are little. Your toddler comes into the room with chocolate stains on his mouth. You ask him if he ate a cookie (that he wasn’t supposed to eat). He tells the truth and says “yes”. Then you over react and punish him, instead of calmly explaining that he disobeyed and won’t get a cookie after dinner (or some gentler consequence).  Your over reaction leads him to think, “That wasn’t the correct answer. Next time, I’ll say ‘no’.”

   Children are constantly looking to their parents for guidance, so when they initially are honest yet still get in major trouble, they learn that honesty doesn’t work. Parents need to remember to model good behavior and reasonable consequences for their kids. When parents start responding calmer to truth when their kids are small, eventually those kids grow up to trust their parents with hard things and to be more honest as teenagers. When there is no trust, teens turn to their friends instead for guidance.

     When asked a difficult question that kids would normally lie about, I teach them to say to their parents (instead of lying): “I don’t want to tell you”, or “I’m afraid to tell you.” This is a huge signal to their parents that they want to stop lying and be truthful . I also ask kids to come to their parents initially with: “There’s something I need to tell you that you’re not going to like.” The tough part now rests on the parents. As parents, you have to let your child know that no matter what they say next, you will remain calm and not over react. (If you have to go to another room to calm down, then do so. It’s better than yelling at your child.) 

   Next, parents need to let their child talk and explain what happened. Do not interrupt them, but show a genuine interest in what they are saying. The important part comes with two crucial questions that every parent wants to know:

               1.  What did you learn from this? 

               2.  Are you going to do this again? 

   Usually your child will answer these two questions truthfully and will have learned a valuable lesson from whatever happened. However, if they are flippant and don’t seem to have learned anything, a consequence might need to be implemented to teach them not to do this again.

   Truth doesn’t always need to result in punishment. If your child makes a mistake that results in a negative consequence, chances are your child has already learned his lesson. So to come behind this lesson with a harsh punishment will only cause your child to resent you for being ‘mean’. A good example of this is the classroom. When kids get in trouble at school, they have already had their punishment by the time they get home. If it’s a one-time incident, you probably do not need to re-punish; however, if it is a repeated behavior that constantly gets your child in trouble, you have a deeper issue that may need to be addressed in counseling.

   As a parent, a good rule of thumb is “Remain Unshockable”. Remember, the teenage years are a test run for adulthood. Prepare for the worst when they come to you as teens with their problems, but respond with love and understanding. This will build their trust in you and they will be more likely to come to you again in the future.

How to Avoid Temper Tantrums when Shopping with your Children

I’ve heard from many parents about the nightmare they have when taking their children shopping with them. It seems that every aisle has something that kids want. And face it, it’s hard to distract kids in a store when they know full well that there are things to be had in there! I know some parents who either ask their spouse to watch their children when they have to shop, or they will actually hire a babysitter. Some children will cry and scream for something that they have set their eyes on. So what’s the answer?  Here’s an easy solution when shopping with children that works every time.

1. Decide if a reward has been earned. Is there something your children have done that is worthy of a reward? Or have they saved up enough of their own money that it’s time to let them spend a little of it? If so, decide ahead of time how much they can spend. If you want to allow them to spend $3.00, then anything labeled $3.00 - $3.99 is allowable. When children are small, it’s difficult to figure out exactly how much is $3.00 - so anything in that range is acceptable. On the other hand, it’s perfectly fine that they may have no money to spend - so there will not be anything they will get this trip. This was often the case with my kids.
2. Explain the rules BEFORE you walk in the store. Once I parked the car, I would have a talk with my kids before we all got out.  They weren’t always allowed to buy something.  On those occasions when we were shopping for a birthday present for a friend, I would remind them that we were shopping for their friend, not for them. But I understood they were probably going to see something they wanted. So I told them that if they saw something they really wanted (and only ONE thing), they could bring it to me and I would write it down on their Christmas or birthday list. Then they would have to put it back. If they got upset and wanted it right then, I not only would not write it down, but they would most likely not get that particular gift. With the smart phone technology we have these days, it’s easy to pull up the note page and create a Christmas list where the child can see that we are actually writing it down. 
3. Help them decide.  When given choices, kids usually always are able to make the right choice. If this is a trip where they do get to spend money, and they can’t decide from one toy to the next, let them know this is their decision and they can choose one. Give them about a minute to choose. If they get upset because they can’t have both, remind them that they can either have one or none. And in the cases where the kids aren’t allowed to get anything that day, remind them that if they show you their choice and allow you to write it down, they will have it on their Christmas list. If they decide to get upset and cry, then they are choosing to not have that gift at all.  Kids are smart. They will test this new rule to see if you will follow it. And when teaching this rule to your kids, always be willing to leave the store if a temper tantrum ensues. This will show your kids that you are serious. If they do have a tantrum, no need to punish them or get upset. Simply tell them, “You’re really upset with the choice you made this time. Maybe next time, you’ll make a better choice.”  

It may take some work at first. But eventually your kids will understand these boundaries and begin to show respect inside a store.  And imagine their surprise when something they asked for earlier shows up for Christmas.

Learn to Love Your Spouse For Who They Are

My husband and I have led marriage seminars, helping couples take a fresh look at their spouse. The focus is on learning what is right with your spouse and what motivates them, then changing your pattern of behavior from a “what have you done for me lately” approach, to “how can I encourage you to show you I love you” approach. When couples start to realize that their spouse is actually very different than they are and are motivated by different things, then it’s easier to understand them and meet those needs in a way that builds them up rather than tears them down. 

It is so easy to spend all day out in the world being nice to others, then come home and take all our frustrations out on our spouse. But this is not the way it’s supposed to be. Your spouse is the person you should be closest to, not your dumping ground when the day is over.  Here are some things to help turn your negative patterns into positive ones:

1. Pray for your spouse every day. Stormie Omartian has written several books on how to pray for one another.  “The Power of a Praying Wife”, “The Power of a Praying Husband” and “The Power of Prayer to Change Your Marriage” are excellent places to start if you aren’t sure exactly what to pray for your spouse. If you really would like your spouse to change, begin by praying for him/her every morning.
2. Be grateful for your spouse. If you feel that you and your spouse have been in a negative downward spiral lately, then start to list the things that you are grateful for and you will find that your attitude will begin to change. When I’ve had a particularly stressful day, I will think of things I’m grateful for about my husband as I drive home. That way, I’m in a much more positive mood when I walk in the door and I avoid taking out my frustration on him.
3. Do something kind and unexpected for your spouse. When I work with couples, I often have them each make up a list of things they would like their spouse to do that shows their love for them - at no cost or expense. For example, if you get up to get a drink of water, offer to get one for your spouse. For those couples who are struggling to get along, I tell them to “act as if you loved each other”. Believe it or not, a simple act of kindness goes a long way toward communicating that you care about each other. After a while, this behavior becomes second nature and you will find yourselves being much more considerate of each other and the love will eventually return.

In the Bible, we are never commanded to treat others the way they have treated us. We are commanded to treat others the way we would like them to treat us. This means that someone has to be nice first. A difficult concept in today’s society, because everyone is selfish and looks to meet his own needs first. As Christians, we are taught to set aside our own needs for the needs of others. This has to start in the home - with our spouse who is entirely and completely different from us. Embrace these differences and learn to love your spouse for all the things that are right about them. 

Can Siblings Really Get Along with Each Other?

  Whenever our family would go to relatives’ homes for holidays or special get togethers, I would always hear comments like, “I can’t believe how well your kids get along with each other.” I must admit, my children have always gotten along well and it was obvious that they cared about each other. My daughter (Courtney) is 3 1/2 years older than my son (Adam).  Today, at ages 25 & 21, they live in separate states, yet they remain very close.  

   As I think back on what we did to foster this great relationship, I know it was our faithful prayers for them, our church attendance every Sunday, and our “Family Fun Nights” we had every Monday night. Once we started having these Family Fun Nights, my kids couldn’t wait for Mondays to get here. I believe these Family Fun Nights not only sealed their relationship with each other, but also taught them how to empathize with each other as well as instilling true Christian values and morals. So what is a Family Fun Night?  Let me explain:

   First - EAT  We picked a night that worked for our family - a night that we could all be together at home. We decided on Monday nights. We first had dinner together, but the special thing was that everyone had a chance to pick their favorite meal. Since there were four in our family, we started with the oldest choosing first. So my husband would choose on the first Monday, I would choose on the second Monday, and so forth. The idea was that at least once a week, we would all eat a meal together at home. For larger families, you can double up (parents pick a meal together, or one picks the main meal, other picks dessert, etc).

   Second - LEARN  After the meal, we would gather together for the fun lesson. And I do mean FUN. We used some excellent books published by Heritage Builders Publishing (heritagebuilders.com) called Family Nights Tool Chest. They have several books with different topics.  Our favorite was the Simple Science book. These activities have a purpose and a message from the Bible that really drives the point home for the kids.  

   Third - PRAY  After these fun activities, we would get out the notebook and write down our prayer requests for the week. We would then go around in a circle and pray for the person next to us. I believe this was the most helpful part of our nights together.  To hear our kids talk about someone at school who was bothering them, or praying to do well on a test, and then have them pray about it was not only helpful for us as parents, but it also gave each child the ability to empathize with each other and to see what the other was struggling with.  

   Fourth - PLAY  After our prayer time, we would choose a game to play together. The game was chosen by whoever chose the meal for the week. The adults always wanted to play sedentary games where there wasn’t much moving involved, except around the game board. The kids always wanted to play video games or hide and seek. We would play the game for about 30 minutes or an hour. Then the kids had a few minutes to play or read before being tucked into bed with prayers, bedtime stories, and good night kisses.

   The entire Family Fun Night only takes about 2 hours. Assuming you get 8 hours of sleep every night, you would have 16 hours a day to do as you wish. Spread that over 7 days and you have 112 hours every week. When you think about it this way, spending 2 hours a week building up your family and doing something fun together that will have lasting results is really a no brainer!

The Importance of Reading

When is the last time someone read a story to you? Probably when you were a small child.  I have always loved a good story and ever since my children were small, their bedtime routine consisted of reading them a story (or two) every night before they went to bed.  When they were really little, it would be short stories with few words on the page.  I would read at least 3 of those.  Then, as they got older, I would read longer stories, only reading one or two chapters of the story each night until the story ended. 

 (The picture above is of my daughter and me reading a chapter book.)

One time I was reading my daughter a book and the story turned very sad.  I was too choked up to read.  My daughter grabbed the book and said “for goodness sakes, Mom!  I’ll read it!”  So she read it out loud until the sad part was over.  As my daughter grew older, she enjoyed reading out loud, so she took over the role of reading to her younger brother. (See picture below.)

As you can imagine, both of my children grew up to be readers, though my son doesn’t read as much as before since he’s in college now.  My daughter majored in creative writing and she is an amazing writer.  

There are many benefits to being an avid reader. It has been found to increase intelligence, reduce stress, improve writing and speaking skills, increase vocabulary and memory, and many others. Years ago, I worked in a psychiatric hospital in Texas and lead a group on stress management. Their favorite groups were the ones where I would encourage them to get in a comfortable place on the couch or floor and then I would read a children's story to them. They were able to forget their stress as they focused on the lively and uplifting story. This past year, I worked in the school system and counseled children from kindergarten through 12th grade.  Most of them were at or below the poverty level.  Barely any of them read much.  The ones who did were doing better in school. The ones who didn’t were basically failing. They would rather play video games, or watch TV than read. 

It’s tragic that most kids today do not enjoy reading. They rarely ever have a story read to them at home and the books that are assigned in school don’t interest them. If you have kids, take the time to find some interesting stories to read and start reading aloud to them.  There are lots of resources to help you find good read-aloud stories, but author Jim Trelease wrote several that I recommend.  Here is his website:     http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/rah-intro.html

Why not choose one evening a week to turn off the television and have everyone read for an hour?  Reading opens the entire world to a child and can help them in every area of their lives. And who knows? You might just learn something, too!

Walk by Faith, Not by Sight

In the Bible, we find a verse in 2 Corinthians 5:7 that says, “...for we walk by faith, not by sight...”.  I have heard that verse my entire life, but I have never really given it much thought until this year as I began to study the book of Hebrews.  For the past 5 years, I have read my Chronological Bible  every day.  At the end of last year, however, I mentioned to my husband that I wanted to start digging a bit deeper this year and he suggested we study the book of Hebrews.  I went to the Christian book store and selected a book by Warren Wiersbe on Hebrews.  The theme of the study was: Live by Faith, Not by Sight.  

Let me digress a bit.  After my first husband died from cancer 5 years ago, I felt burdened by the financial weight that had been placed on my shoulders.  I not only had to take care of myself, but both of my children, one who was in college.  Even though God came through for us at every turn, I still worried about what the next day would bring.  When I remarried last year, my husband pointed out to me that I was still living in fear and not trusting God to take care of all of my needs.  I had never seen it this way - I thought it was my responsibility to worry and that I was being a responsible adult.  But is that really the way God wants us to live?  I decided that this year, my theme would be to walk by faith, not by sight.  So beginning this year, any time I would have a worrisome thought, I would say out loud; “I will walk by faith, not by sight”. This means that at that moment, I was choosing to stop focusing on the things I could see that worried me, but I was focusing instead on the promises of God to take care of me.  This doesn’t mean that I can stop being responsible for where my money goes or stop caring about things that are important.  It means that I have chosen to stop worrying about it.  

Our world around us seems to be falling apart.  The changes going on around us seem so unreal and scary.  If our faith is on things in the world and not on God Who created the world, then we will be shaken.  We tend to put our faith in money, careers, friends, possessions, physical appearance, etc.  If we lose our job, we tend to panic; if our bank account gets too low, we panic; if things don’t go the way we planned, we panic.  But if we look at these same things with eyes that understand how much God loves us and wants to take care of us, then we can relax and trust that it is something that God has allowed in our lives to teach us.

In my work with adolescents and adults, I have often used this example:  If your student is given homework from school, do you stand at the door when they get home from school with your arms out and say, “Give me your homework so I can do it for you because I love you so much.”?  Heavens, no.  Both adults and adolescents understand the concept that if the parents do their homework for them, then they will never learn anything.  Homework is given for the specific purpose of having the student practice things they learned at school so they can understand it and master that skill.  In this same way, God allows us to do our own ‘homework’.  Can He step in and rescue us from difficulties?  Of course.  But does He? Not very often.  He wants us to learn the lessons on our own.  This will increase our faith for the next lesson.  And just like school, these lessons get a bit more difficult as we grow.  Is it possible to never have problems in this life?  Not really.  We would never appreciate a beautiful sunny day if we never experienced a storm.  But I believe that the problems we have in this life give us opportunities to grow closer to God and allow Him to teach us how to handle these problems.  So the next time something comes into your life to cause stress and worry, try walking by faith and not by sight.  You will discover true peace.

Just Say No

One of the ‘hot topics’ in counseling has always been setting boundaries.  In other words, how to say ‘no’ to demands on our time, invitations to do something we really don’t want to do, or even handling our children’s unreasonable requests.  This is not just a problem for parents, but also for individuals as well.  It is difficult to set healthy boundaries for ourselves and say ‘no’ when we need to.  But not being able to say ‘no’ can lead us down a road that we may not want to go down.  I believe this is why so many people are way overcommitted with things that take up their time.

I often have parents ask me how to handle their children when they ask for something they obviously can’t have.  Many parents just tell them ‘no’ without giving it a thought, but this often results in a temper  tantrum.  I even witnessed parents lie to a child in Target one day, by allowing the child to think he was getting a toy truck.  They allowed the child to put it in the basket, but when they got to the checkout counter, they whispered to the clerk to put the truck back because they weren’t buying it.  The child watched with eagle eyes to see if the truck made it into the shopping bag.  When he realized what had happened, he started to wail.  At this point, the parents grabbed him by the arm and basically drug him out of the store.  Oh what problems this family is going to have with that boy as he grows up and starts to lie to them!  I had to restrain myself from following them out and letting them know the harm they had just done.

When my daughter was three, we were shopping in a grocery store around Easter.  As we walked in, we were welcomed by a huge tower of stuffed Easter bunnies.  Her eyes widened and I asked her if she wanted to play with one while we shopped.  I knew I was not going to buy it for her.  She enjoyed playing with the bunny the entire time I grocery shopped.  Then, before I got in line at the checkout, I took a few minutes to talk to her about this bunny.  “Honey, did you enjoy getting to play with the bunny today?” She nodded.  I told her, “You see all those bunnies over there?  Well they are all friends.  I know you really like this bunny and I wish we could bring him home, but he lives here with his friends.  Now you have a choice: you can choose to put the bunny back with his friends and next time we come, you can play with him again.  Or you can get upset about it and next time we come, you can just look at them instead of playing with them.  Now, what do you choose to do?”  She thought hard for a minute, then she decided she wanted to put him back.  Simple as that, she allowed me to push the cart back to the bunnies and she watched as I put him back.  No temper tantrum.  No power struggle.  Just a few minutes to reason with her and she understood.  And she always got to play with something from then on as I shopped.

A good way to say ‘no’ to a child is to explain the situation, then give them a choice, as I did in the example above. The two choices need to be something you will agree to.  Next, allow the child to think a minute and make their choice, which empowers them to feel a bit more in control.  For example, “You can choose to do your homework now and watch TV with us after dinner,” or “You can choose to wait until after dinner to do your homework instead of watching TV with us.”  Either choice is a good choice because the homework will get done no matter what.  

The second way to say ‘no’, is by giving them what they wish for.  This is usually the best way to handle adults.  If you are asked to chair a committee, or attend a performance and you really don’t have time to do these things, you can simply say ‘no’, which sounds pretty rude.  Or you can say, “I really wish I could, but I can’t.”  Consider this:  You are riding in a car with a friend or spouse and you spot your dream car on the road.  You comment that you love that car and want to own one.  Your friend/spouse replies, “Are you crazy? You know you can’t afford to buy a car like that. Stop dreaming!”  Stop for a moment and think of how you feel if you hear this.  Now, what if they say, “Wow, that is a nice car.  I didn’t know that was your favorite car.  I wish you could buy one some day.”  Does that response make you feel a little better?  Both responses clearly indicated that you could not afford to buy that car, but the second response let you know that the person understood your desire to have it.  This is how people (and children) feel when we give them their wish.  It lets them know we understand the importance of it, but at the same time, setting healthy boundaries for ourselves because we can’t possibly stretch ourselves any more.

When my son was 3, he came to me one night after I had put him to bed.  He knew I had bought some Oreo cookies at the store earlier that night.  He asked if he could have one.  I knew there was no way he was going to get a cookie at this hour.  My response was, “Ooh, an Oreo cookie does sound good right about now.  I really wish I could give you one.  But you know, it’s really late to be eating a cookie.  How about we pick out a couple of cookies and put them in a special baggie so they will be yours to eat tomorrow?”  He readily agreed to this and went back to bed with no problem.  And I followed through by giving him his cookies after lunch.  

Sure, it’s way easier to ‘just say no’ to people, but it is far better to stop a minute and take the time to give someone their wish and let them know we really do care about them.  And it will help us to set healthier boundaries for ourselves.