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Telling Your Kids the Truth
By Polly | November 15, 2005
One day out of the blue, my daughter asked me if I ever lied to her….this question made me stop whatever I was doing and pause….I had to think, did I ever lie to my kids? Though I couldn’t think of a specific instance in which I lied to my kids, I had to admit there were probably times when I didn’t offer the entire truth or purposely left out important details, but overall I didn’t make a regular practice of lying to my kids. So when the same daughter asked me last week if Santa was real, I suddenly remembered our prior conversation about lying and how I promised her I would always try and tell her the truth. Is telling your second grader that Santa and the Easter Bunny were real actually lying? I bought some time and dodged her question, but couldn’t help but feel like I wasn’t being honest with her. So later that night after her sisters were in bed, I sat down with her and asked her if she wanted to know the truth about Santa. I confessed that Santa was really Mom and Dad and the reason I was telling her was because I wanted her to learn the truth from me, not one of her classmates. I reminded her of my promise about not lying to her and explained to her that I thought it best if she heard the thruth from me. There were a lot of tears and sadness and my heart broke because I knew that an innocence of childhood had just slipped away, but in the end my daughter knew she could trust me to tell her the truth.
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Topics: Family Life Tips, Family Time |