Does Your Child Lie?

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 7, 1915

Does Your Child Lie?

A NEIGHBOR of mine left her children of seven and nine alone in the house while she did the marketing. When she returned, and began to prepare dinner, she found that the gasoline stove refused to light. She thought the matter over for several minutes, and then, turning to the interested children, she quietly asked, “How much water did you put in?”

“Oh, about two dipperfuls!” they answered, readily.

If she had demanded, “What have you children done to this stove?” they would have answered as readily, “Nothing.”

Children should get in the habit of truth telling while young, we all agree. It is infinitely better to let a few childish misdemeanors go unnoticed, and get the truth about them. The children will outgrow mischievous naughtiness, but the habit of lying will cling like a bur to wool.

Somebody had gouged out the eyes of Dorothy’s doll. Mother strongly suspected Jan, but he said firmly, too firmly, “No, sir! I wouldn’t do such a thing.” The matter was dropped, but later in the day mother slipped to the floor by Jan’s side and whispered, “Jan, how did you do it?” “Why,” said he, “I just took my thumb like this, an’ scrooged ’em out, easy!” Though it is true he had denied the deed in the first place, yet since he told the truth finally, and apparently of his own accord, it really tended to develop frankness; whereas, if he had been urged to tell the truth, to say right out that he was guilty, he would in all probability never have admitted it, and the imprint of the lie would be registered on his soul. We may sometimes ignore a spur-of-the-moment denial. Don’t press a point for your own satisfaction; give the child a chance to reconsider; for he is only learning to live, remember. Then bring things about so that he can tell you the truth easily and naturally.

I remember well one of my childhood’s lies. I had found a dollar in mother’s workbasket. It looked attractive to me, and I calmly took it. Then suddenly the money was missed. Had I taken it? I was asked. No, no, no, I had never seen it. I did not take it. I did not take it.

I do not know why they were sure I was guilty, but I can still hear my father say: “An untruthful child! What have I done or left undone to deserve this? She must tell us the truth. It is not the loss of the money, but that my daughter, my little daughter, should take what did not belong to her, and then lie about it.” My heart melted within me at this, and I could have confessed all if I had been given time and had been handled with tact; but, instead, I was whipped—first for telling the lie and then for taking the dollar. Then I could not tell, even though I had wanted to—my lips seemed glued together. To lie and steal had been bad enough, but to acknowledge it openly, and let them be sure of the depths of my wickedness, was beyond me. I slipped the money back one day, but I never, never told the truth about it.

A father whose half-grown son is wayward and the cause of much sorrow, said, in speaking of his early training: “When he was six, he told me a lie. I tried to teach him how dreadful a thing that was. I said to him: ‘I can see the word liar written across your forehead. You are branded with your sin. It will take a long, long time before you can wear it away. If you tell another lie, the brand will sink deeper until you may never lose it. Every one will know you are a liar.’” Although the father was speaking figuratively, the boy took it literally, and it must have struck him as being something of a “whopper” itself, after he grew a few years older. Today, although the lad is truthful, he and his father are far apart in spirit. That one lie was magnified into such a crime that the proportions of life were lost. Truthfulness may be achieved by saner methods. One should never call a child a liar, or bluntly accuse him of lying. The danger is that by doing so he be made one. Children are greatly influenced, as who is not, by what people think they are. Most of us live up, or down, to our reputations. . . .

Truth telling is one of the most essential lessons that the child has to learn. We see parents in every walk of life trying to inculcate a love for the truth, no matter how much they may differ in other things. We recognize that in every one of us it is a fundamental part of character. If a man’s word cannot be trusted, he is as nothing. If he is a liar, he becomes an outcast among men; he can hold no responsible position, command no respect. So the child must learn early how much depends on his telling the truth, and not only because lying is bad, as he can see for himself, but because truth telling is so beautiful, and we esteem so highly the person who is to be trusted in every word and deed.

—American Motherhood for September.