I ran across a fascinating article on how much parents lie to their children, even while teaching their kids that lying is wrong. Turns out lots of people do this, and the researchers called it Pinocchio Parenting.
The whole thing was quite an eye-opener to me, as I hadn’t considered all the possible situations in which a parent might lie to their child. I wrote about it over at GNMParents (now Forever Parenting) today. Click on over and share your story.
Do you lie to your kids? How much? Would you consider having them believe in Santa Claus a lie?
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Earnest Parenting: help for parents who want to be honest.
Everyone lies to their kidds…bcoz sometimes we cant tell them true…. 😉
Free Acai Berry, I disagree. 🙂 It’s true, there are questions that I can’t answer. But I can be honest with them and say, “I can’t answer that question.” We’ve explained to our boys that there are times in life when you’re too young for some knowledge…that it can be too heavy to carry. When they’re old enough, we’ll tell them more, but they’re going to just have to trust that we love them and want to protect them as much as possible. Because we strive to be honest with them always, this arrangement has worked so far. Yes, it has caused them some frustration, but we’ve done our best to keep the promise and add to what we tell them as they’ve aged.
It’s probably not perfect, but it’s the best I can do.