Chapter 20 2.children are born not to lie

Children are not born to lie. When Yuanyuan was four years old, her father and I had been floating in Beijing for nearly two years.We didn’t have a registered permanent residence, and we didn’t have a house. My family and another friend surnamed Gao shared a small courtyard with three bungalows. Yuanyuan called him Uncle Gao.Uncle Gao likes Yuanyuan very much and often talks to her.At that time, we wanted to find a place that could solve the problem of household registration and housing, and it happened that there were two design institutes in Yantai who wanted my husband to go for an interview, so we took Yuanyuan to Yantai together.Before leaving, because it was an unresolved matter whether the negotiation could be completed, there was no need to tell others; so when the husband met Xiao Gao the day before leaving, he said that we were going back to our hometown in Inner Mongolia.

After arriving in Yantai, I had a preliminary negotiation with a recruiting unit and decided to come here, but my husband needs to stay for a trial period for a week.So I took Yuanyuan back to Beijing first.Because I considered that I would have to wait for my husband to work there for a week before making a final decision. To be on the safe side, I said to Yuanyuan on the train back to Beijing: When you go back to see Uncle Gao, don’t tell him that we are coming to Yantai. Yuanyuan nodded sensibly. As a result, when she and I returned to the small courtyard, Yuanyuan immediately announced when she saw Xiao Gao, "Uncle Gao, I can't tell you where I went." Xiao Gao said, "Didn't you go back to Inner Mongolia?" Yuan Yuan Yuan said: "No, my mother won't let me tell you where I went." So I had to tell the truth.

After we arrived in Yantai, the unit quickly completed the registration process and gave us a three-bedroom house.After wandering for several years, we came to such a beautiful coastal city and had such a stable life, which made us feel very happy. We were very grateful to the dean who recruited us, so we bought it for 200 yuan when we returned to our hometown during the Spring Festival. A pair of craft small silver bowls with Mongolian characteristics are prepared to be taken back as a special product of the hometown to express our gratitude to the director. My husband and I have never given gifts to any leader. Although this time we gave this small handicraft just out of gratitude, when we took the "gift" and took Yuanyuan to the dean's house, we felt a little embarrassed, as if we were afraid of others. Know.Yuanyuan didn't understand our feelings, she came and went happily, very happy that she went to give something to others.So when we came back downstairs and saw a colleague from her father’s unit who lived on the same floor as us, she excitedly said to the person: “Uncle Xiong, we just went to the dean’s grandfather’s house and gave the dean Grandpa is going to give presents!" Her father could only giggle in embarrassment.

These things now seem to be just jokes and are very interesting, but at the time they made us very uncomfortable, and some of us couldn't get out of the stage.But we didn't blame the child, and we didn't try to say any more cover-ups to smooth the situation.If we told lies in front of our children for the sake of face, we might not be embarrassed ourselves, but we taught our children to tell lies.Such a thing is not worthwhile. We have always paid attention to developing Yuanyuan's honest character, and never taught her to tell lies unless it is very occasional and out of goodwill; at the same time, we also pay attention to try our best to set an example and be honest first.

"Not lying" is the basic guarantee of happiness in life. A person who tells a lot of lies, no matter how "successful" he is in terms of secular standards, he is not a happy person in essence, because his morality has always been suspended. Children are very smart and can delicately observe the reactions of adults.It may be that the "gift to the dean's grandfather" made us feel too much embarrassment for a moment. After returning home, Yuanyuan seemed a little uneasy. She felt that she had done something wrong.We immediately reassured and said, "It's okay. I just thought it was unnecessary to say it. It doesn't matter if you say it."Her father hugged her even more as a compliment and said: Dad has such a little secret, and you have shaken it all out!As if she had done something meritorious.

We all laughed, and Yuanyuan felt relieved. Yuanyuan is growing up day by day and becoming more and more sensible. She will definitely not always "shake off her father's secret" because of our calm attitude.Some things can naturally be understood as she grows older, what should be said and what should not be said, as long as she has a healthy mind, she will definitely grasp this scale. If a child has a bad habit of lying, it must be something wrong with his upbringing. There are two reasons why children lie, one is to imitate adults, and the other is under pressure.Every child's first lie comes from here.

The first is to imitate adults.Although no parent deliberately teaches their children to lie, even parents who often lie do not like their children to lie.However, if the parents often lie to the child in order to make the child obedient when getting along with the child; or if the parent often tells lies to others and is heard and witnessed by the child from time to time, the child will gradually learn to tell lies.There is also a situation where parents often say some pretentious words out of some need to cover up in adult society. Although there is no moral inappropriateness, it is just a social communication skill, but if they are noticed by young children It will also leave the impression of telling lies to children and teach them to tell lies.

Mozi compared the influence of education on the matter of dyeing silk. "Dyeing in the blue will make it green, and dyeing it in yellow will make it yellow. What enters it will change, and its color will also change. Therefore, dyeing must not be careless." Therefore, if a child appears to lie Fault, parents must first conduct self-reflection. Another reason that causes children to lie is "pressure", that is, the parents are strict, and they will not let go of every mistake of the child easily, criticizing, even beating and scolding; The idea of ​​not being considerate of some wishes of children.These will cause children's emotions to be often tense and unbalanced. They tell lies in order to avoid punishment, achieve wishes or achieve balance.

A mother came to me for counseling about her child's lying.Both she and her lover are Ph. Ds. From her, we can see the good cultivation of intellectuals. I think her children should not imitate their lies from their parents. Her child is a girl who was in the second grade of junior high school.The mother and I started chatting about specific things. She said, just take the most recent one.I spent more than 1,000 yuan to buy a color-screen electronic dictionary for my daughter, and I repeatedly told her not to lose things, because my child often loses things. Once she was punished by standing motionless in a room for two hours.She also liked the color-screen dictionary very much, and assured us that she would keep it carefully and never lose it.As a result, such an expensive dictionary was lost after more than a month of use, and she didn't tell me about it.I found that her dictionary was gone, and asked what was going on, and she said that she had lent it to a classmate.I asked her to come back quickly, but couldn't get it back for several days.In the first few days, she always said that the classmate forgot to bring it to her. After asking for a few days, she said that she would come back, but she changed hands and lent it to another classmate.I was a little skeptical and told her to take it back two days later.Two days later, she told me that she would come back, but she left it in the classroom.I didn't believe it, and said that I would follow her to the classroom the next day to have a look, but she still pretended to be calm up to this time.It wasn't until the next morning that I really wanted to follow her to school that she cried, said that the dictionary was lost, and admitted that she had been lying to me these days.

The mother said that children used to feel a little uncomfortable telling lies, but now they make up lies to deceive their parents for so many days, and they actually tell the truth, as if nothing happened.She couldn't understand how she could teach the child so hard, how the child could learn to lie.She said that she could forgive the child for throwing things, but she could not forgive her for lying and cheating. I can understand the mother's anger, but this incident made me feel a little pain in my heart.This mother only saw the child's fault of throwing things and lying, but did not carefully understand the inner suffering of the child in those days.

I told this mother: As far as the child's behavior in this matter is concerned, it should not be called lying. She just wanted to hide one thing.When a child loses something, it's not like you think nothing is wrong at all. She is actually very painful inside.Under normal circumstances, children should seek help from their parents, but why doesn't your child seek your help instead of delaying and lying?This is because she did not regard her parents as sharers of misfortune.The child's reaction like this must be out of experience. I can guess that in your previous life, the child must always be criticized when he did something wrong. Is that so? The mother thought for a while, nodded and said, we are very strict with her. I said, you think strictness is good for children, but children don't think it is good.She knew that if she told her parents about this, not only would she not be able to retrieve the dictionary, but she would also be criticized—why did she turn one bad thing into two.So she would rather choose to hide it. The mother was a little surprised and said that this analysis made some sense, but we never beat or scolded the child. She did something wrong, and she was only criticized a few times, and at most she was punished to stand for a while.What's the matter, which child is not criticized by his parents.Besides, paper can't hold fire, so is it necessary to delay for so many days by telling lies? This mother doesn't know that children are actually very good at saving face. Children often take things that adults think are insignificant.We must never measure a child's stress by how we feel.Adults often criticize children casually, just like speaking ordinary words, but they leave children with a very negative emotional experience.Although the child also knows that the fire cannot be covered with paper, and the matter will eventually be revealed in a few days, but in order to avoid the adult's reprimand, she can delay it for a few days, which is in line with the child's way of thinking. It's not that the child was not nervous during this process, in fact, she lived in tension every day in those few days.Whether you are an adult or a child, it is painful to keep lying to hide something. In fact, no one likes to lie.The child would rather bear the pain of procrastination than tell the parents—this is actually a signal that there is something wrong with the relationship between the parents and the child, and the child subconsciously distrusts and rejects the parents.Parents who are active and powerful must reflect on themselves and change themselves, otherwise a series of troubles may arise in the future. I told these ideas to the parents, and she kept nodding.I could feel that she was sincerely reflecting on herself.She asked me with some embarrassment, then what do you think I should do in the future, if the child made a mistake, should we pretend not to see it and not talk about it, can that work? I said, this is not a question of pretending or not, but a question of how you understand your child.Your mistakes in the past were that you did not allow your children to make any mistakes, so criticism has been running through your life. It seems that if parents do not speak up, children will not know how to change, and if they do not speak up, they will not fulfill their responsibilities as parents.In fact, making mistakes is a compulsory course for children's growth. Parents should learn to accept their children's mistakes, and they don't need to criticize and educate their children when they find out that they are not doing well.In the process of letting children recognize mistakes and correct them, "not saying" is often the best "saying".The child is already very sad when he makes a mistake, and the parent's understanding often makes the child remember the lesson better than criticism.Even if it is said, it must be said in a way that does not let the child lose face. The doctor nodded.I saw that she was willing to listen, so I continued: As for the bad habit of children often throwing things, since it has been said many times and punished, it means that these methods are useless.If you continue to use it, not only will the problem of throwing things not be solved, but it will also make children more prone to lying.In the future, we should use "methods" to help her on this issue instead of educating her with "criticism". I gave her my own example.For example, my daughter Yuanyuan once took off her sun hat and put it on the seat next to her in a taxi, and forgot to take it when she got out of the car; after a while, she and I took a taxi together, and almost lost the new one because of the same reason. Clothes left in the car.Let's conclude that when taking a taxi in the future, you must never put things on the seat, you must hold them in your hand, and don't find it troublesome.If you carry a few bags, put them at the door where you get off the car, so that you won't leave things behind. Helping children think of some preventative options is far more effective than criticism.If the child really has a problem that cannot be changed, as long as the problem is not too big, you can let him go.Problems that cannot be solved by "understanding" or "solutions" generally cannot be solved by "criticism".Doesn't loving someone also include accepting his flaws? This doctor's mother is a person who is particularly good at learning. She is the most sincerely discussed and reflective parent I have met.After our conversation, she talked with me several times on the phone. She had a very good understanding of "don't let the child lose face".She said that the child not only no longer "lies", but also has a much more stable temperament, and his academic performance has also improved significantly.From her tone, I could hear the ease of her family's transformation. Many people are used to blaming children's behavior problems on the children themselves, so they are used to blaming children; but I can see from my own and other people's experience that children's behavior habits are so dependent on parents' education methods.Therefore, when parents think about changing their children, the starting point should always be how to change their own education methods.Even if you think that your child's problems come from the child himself, you have the responsibility to arouse the child's change by changing yourself.If you don't think this way, you will never find the path to change your child. On July 30, 2007, I saw a program called "Homework/Lies" on Beijing TV. A girl didn't like to do homework and often lied because of her homework. Her parents beat and scolded her to no avail. The whole family came to the show , seek help from experts.From their accounts, it can be seen at a glance that the core of the problem is that parents' inappropriate parenting methods cause children to tire of learning and lie out of fear of punishment.Therefore, the root of changing children lies in the change of parenting attitude. However, a "psychological expert" who was invited focused on educating children, talking about the dialectic of "smartness and wisdom" to the children, and finally only said lightly to the parents, "You also have some faults". Seriously remind parents to reflect on themselves. The expert's words sounded right, but they didn't say anything.Everyone can tell the truth, but how can a little child get the motivation to write homework by thinking about "smartness and wisdom" when facing homework that bothers her every day? Before the end of the show, with the efforts of the host, the child promised on the spot that he would do his homework well in the future and would never lie again.It can be seen that the reason why the child made such a "guarantee" is obviously due to the coercion of the atmosphere of the show, as well as the fear of adults and the desire to "be better". When the child made the promise, I believed that she was serious; but I also believed that when she returned home after the show, as long as the "educational ecological environment" surrounding her did not change—mainly the attitude of her parents did not change—she would not Will change, will soon return to the same way.The truth is, the poor kid couldn't help telling another big "lie" on the show. It can be speculated that the reason for this girl's lying is that at first, because she didn't do her homework well, her parents criticized her and asked her to make a promise, so the child made a promise to do her homework well.But children often have no estimate of their ability to fulfill their promises. She only makes promises under the pressure of her parents, lacking both the rationality and the interest in fulfilling the promise.If the parents lack nuanced consideration and proper promotion at this time, the result can only be that the child reneges on his promise, because there are too many reasons that will cause her to fail to fulfill her promise. Every time a child breaks his promise, the adults will be dissatisfied, criticize her for not counting, and show dissatisfaction, even contempt.Children themselves will also look down on themselves because of this.She gradually lost her self-confidence and self-esteem, and she became more and more indifferent to the demands of others and what she said. In order to avoid punishment, she could use lies to resist at any time. His bad habits, his skin is getting thicker and thicker. Lying and thick-skinned are often linked, Suhomlinski said, "shamelessness is produced by not being willing to fulfill one's promises."He lied so many times that he couldn't tell which was true and which was false, and a person's morality began to degenerate accordingly. When a child develops the habit of lying, he will lie for various reasons. I once heard a parent of a high school student say that his child always lies. For example, he had enough pocket money, but in order to show off in front of his classmates or spend indiscriminately, he often made up all kinds of lies to cheat his father of the money, or Steal money straight from the drawer.The father thought it was the greed that the child was born with, and lamented that he had lost such a son.I can understand this father's distress, but he is making random attributions, and he understands the result as the cause.The reason why his son regards lying and deceiving people as normal is that in his previous growth, there must have been a series of events that damaged his morality, rather than the "need for money" itself that made him like this. Therefore, in solving the problem of children lying, parents must understand why their children lie, don't look at one thing in isolation, but see the ins and outs of the thing, and see the hidden crux behind it.Only by starting from the crux can we solve the problem fundamentally.As long as there is no incentive, children don't need to embarrass themselves with lying, children are not born to lie. ●There are two reasons for children to lie, one is imitating adults, the other is under pressure.Every child's first lie comes from here. ●The child would rather bear the pain of procrastination than tell the parents—this is actually a signal that there is something wrong with the relationship between the parents and the child, and the child subconsciously distrusts and rejects the parents.Parents who are active and powerful must reflect on themselves and change themselves, otherwise a series of troubles may arise in the future. ●The mistake of many parents is that they cannot allow their children to make any mistakes, so criticism runs through their lives all the time. It seems that if the parents don't speak up, the children will not know how to change, and if they don't speak up, they will not fulfill their responsibilities as parents.In fact, making mistakes is a compulsory course for children's growth. Parents should learn to accept their children's mistakes, and they don't need to criticize and educate their children when they find out that they are not doing well.In the process of letting children recognize mistakes and correct them, "not saying" is often the best "saying".The child is already very sad when he makes a mistake, and the parent's understanding often makes the child remember the lesson better than criticism.Even if it is said, it must be said in a way that does not let the child lose face. ●If the child really has a problem that cannot be changed, as long as the problem is not too big, you can let him go.Problems that cannot be solved by "understanding" or "solutions" generally cannot be solved by "criticism".Doesn't loving someone also include accepting his flaws? ●Children's conduct and habits are so dependent on parents' education.Therefore, when parents think about changing their children, the starting point should always be how to change their parenting style; even if you think that your child's problems come from the child himself, you are also responsible for arousing the child's change by changing yourself.If you don't think this way, you will never find the path to change your child. ●Children often have no estimate of their ability to fulfill their promises, and they only make promises under the pressure of their parents; they lack both rationality and interest in keeping promises.If the parents lack nuanced consideration and proper promotion at this time, the result can only be that the child reneges on his promise, because there are too many reasons that will cause her to fail to fulfill her promise.