Scenario #1: We're reading tons at our house lately. Candace has branched out from 5 minute picture-books to chapter books that take around 30-45 minutes to read. She loves it and we love it too except that it's introducing more complex themes and situations. One such theme came up when we were reading the latest "Pinky and Rex" book together. Pinky wets his pants in school because he was so nervous about the spelling bee. He incidentally won the spelling bee. Pinky has to put on his gym pants because of the accident. Rex is his best friend and they walk home together. Pinky is really embarrassed about what happened and is dreading his little sister, Amanda, finding out about it. So when Amanda see him and asks why he is wearing his gym pants, Rex (Pinky's best friend) lies and says that it's because he won the spelling bee that day and only the winner gets to wear their gym pants the whole day.
Scenario #2: We tease our kids a lot. We tickle them and play games and laugh a lot at our house. Sometimes I pretend to be someone I'm not and I'll tell Candace that I'm "Broomhelga the witch" or some other person and then just tease them about whatever. Then Candace will break up the conversation suddenly and say, "You are lying. You are not "insert whoever or whatever". I'll say that I'm just teasing and she'll say, "But you're lying."
Now these are not huge issues and I'm sure it will just resolve itself as she grows older, but I'm worried that I'm confusing her in some way. Obviously I know lying is wrong, but there are instances where lying would appear not that bad or even okay. Probably I should just stick to the "black and white" approach and be very clear when I'm pretending or point out when others are lying even if they're lying to prevent embarrassment to their best friend. I don't know. I'm interested to hear what other think about this point.
6 comments:
Having no experience, I would have to dig out my child development books in storage. Maybe use the words pretending (which you would clarify you can do in times when there has been a wrong decision made) more. Like I'm pretending to be Broomhelga the witch... I don't know.
Honesty is sometimes hard to teach children. We have the problem lately where the children say the other is lying. I am sure you are doing what is best to help her understand that there is a difference in playing and when there is a time to tell something honestly. :) Good luck, parenthood is such an on-the-job kind of thing. Not only that, but each child is different and learns differently. Your children are so cute and sweet!
So, I observed Candace today in preschool and she loves reading. She would go over to the to the books and pick out some and read for forever until the teacher had a planned activity where the kids had to come over. Very cute! She was even pretending to read to Allison. Needless to say, Allison wasn't very interested. :)
Oh, and the picture is soo cute!
thanks for taking such awesome pictures. It makes me smile a lot.
Here's what I do. Pretending is okay. It's okay to pretend you are someone or something because it uses your imagination. Little kids use their imaginations a lot and that is good. You have to remember that the definition of a lie is when the intent is to decieve. Little kids make up stories all the time. For example, "what did you learn in nursery today?" "I learned about frogs and dinosaurs and how they aren't very nice and then we talked about horses and the one that didn't like to eat apples any more." You happen to know that they really talked about tithing, but were they trying to decieve you or were they just using their imaginations. In my opinion, its better to tell stories about kids telling the truth and the way they felt and then also tell stories about when a child didn't tell the truth and how terrible he/she felt and couldn't sleep, etc. until he/she told the truth. Something like that. Then it's not pointing a finger at them, but it's instilling in them that telling the truth is the right thing. Then make a really really big deal when they do tell the truth when it was a hard thing. Make the punishment be a lot less when the tell the truth. Sorry so long. Some ideas. We miss you guys!!
Bonnie
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