what sets us free
(Raising Truthfulness—Sacca)
There are three things that cannot long be hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
THE BUDDHA
Truthfulness starts concretely—tell the truth; don’t lie (this covers lies of omission, as well). This means telling the truth to ourselves and others, as well as encouraging truthfulness in future generations. When we tell our own truth wisely and ethically, especially spiritual or scientific truths, it can be an act of generosity and kindness, potentially liberating us all.
Why do we lie? Why do we tell the truth? When we are at our best—feeling safe, secure, and peaceful—honesty is easy. Yet study after study shows that when we are emotional, tired, or hungry, our moral muscles weaken, our prefrontal preventive measures fail, and we succumb to temptation and cheating.1 This research indicates the importance of self-care in encouraging honesty and our best behavior.
The slippery slope effect is real. Dan Ariely’s The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty sums up much of the most recent compelling (and amusing) research on why we lie, cheat, and steal.2 Even when dishonesty begins with a minor foible, it creates both inward and outward ripples. For example, a small “gateway” lie often leads to larger lies in what Ariely names the “What-the-Hell Effect.” This effect occurs partially through social reinforcement and partially through us establishing new mental habits (and neural pathways) that crash through the safety barriers of our conscience and social contract. In fact, a recent study scanned the brains of people as they lied and discovered that with each successive lie, their limbic warning system reacted less and less.3 Basically, the subjects were desensitizing themselves to dishonesty, leading them to lie more severely and more frequently.
Dishonest behaviors also spread outward through groups. Witnessing petty crimes has been shown to inoculate us, making it more likely that we will commit such crimes ourselves.4 Cheating is especially contagious when we see people in our community do it (be it at school, on the team, or in the family) as opposed to when we see an outsider cheat. When we do cheat, we are more likely to invite others to join us, perhaps to soothe our guilty conscience and quiet that pesky cognitive dissonance that comes when we violate our own values. From here, it’s easy to see how corruption spreads through once fair and supposedly meritocratic institutions—“What the Hell,” indeed.
We are also more likely to act dishonestly if it benefits others, in a kind of “Robin Hood Effect.” Consider this in relation to your own family—the white lies to get your child into a doctor’s appointment early, the strings you pull to get your child into the right classroom, or the lengths you’d go to save your kids from trouble. This is perhaps the darker side of our inborn altruism. How often do we sacrifice our ethical integrity, even in small ways, for our family and friends? In what ways are our expectations of others stricter than the rules we apply to our loved ones or even ourselves?
Chapter 2 touched on the ways that ethics can help keep everyone safe. Dishonesty is bad for all of us—not only does it erode trust in a family or community, it also usually comes back to haunt us as individuals. We experience the stresses and cognitive dissonance of repeating the lie, telling more cover-up lies, and trying to remember how all the untruths fit together. When we don’t speak authentically, when we don’t present our “truth” to others, we are reinforced in not being ourselves, trapping us in a maze of false facades that don’t match who we really are.
What’s more, when we behave dishonestly, research shows that we are more likely to view others and the world as dishonest, untrustworthy, and unpleasant,5 which is almost the textbook definition of depression. One of the most quoted lines in the Dhammapada (a sacred Buddhist text) asserts, “As we think and act, so our world becomes.” When we think and act dishonestly, our outlook sours, and we live in a darker and less trustworthy world. Essentially, dishonesty furthers our anxiety, depression, isolation, and negative outlook.
The fact is, we don’t live in a world where everyone is honest. Thus, it would be foolish to teach our children to be naively trusting of others. But we can teach them a healthy skepticism. Some kids—especially those from difficult backgrounds—already approach the world with a street-smart type of suspicion appropriate to the kind of world they will likely be entering. A more privileged child can afford to trust in a way that a child from an unstable background cannot, which is one reason people who have experienced trauma or other violations of trust may struggle with attachment, depression, and anxiety. For kids with these experiences, helping them feel safe (by being a trustworthy adult) teaches them to begin to trust the world again and learn to thrive.
reflection What explicit and implicit lessons do you teach your children about trusting others and trusting the world? How do you help them determine truth from falsehood?
Telling the Truth to Ourselves and the World
How do we tell the truth to ourselves and to the world? To begin with, we must look clearly at our own thoughts and behavior. We might ask whether the old stories we tell about ourselves, others, and the world—the stories we use to justify our own behavior—are actually true. Our minds show a “confirmation bias,” which is that funny habit of rewriting the past to fit our preexisting views and biases. If our children get disciplined at school, do we jump to blame their teachers or friends, or do we hold ourselves (and them) accountable? Sometimes we have to confront or speak some painful truths: Our child may need more help than we can provide. We may need to seek therapeutic, academic, or medical support. Or we may require a drastic change in our relationship with our partners, family, or friends. Honesty often requires tremendous courage.
Telling the truth to others really can set us free, which is why therapy, confession, and counseling groups are so effective. That hardly means telling every parent in the PTO our darkest secret, nor does it mean going into detail about the textures and colors we found in our newborn’s diaper when talking with a colleague at the water cooler. But it does mean we need to open up to others skillfully.
Speaking honestly and unburdening yourself of pain and past hurt can even be an act of kindness to yourself and others, especially those who have experienced similar pain. When we share skillfully, we see we are not alone in our suffering. When we talk about our fear of being bad parents in a new parent support group, we connect to others with compassion. When we share the truth of our own childhood struggles in an appropriate way with our own child, we practice generosity. When we speak honestly about supporting a child through mental illness or addiction, we offer wisdom and hope to another suffering parent. As a therapist and workshop facilitator, I witness this all the time. Remember from chapter 3—just putting words to our pain rewires our brains to integrate those experiences in healthy ways.
Just as dishonesty has a ripple effect, so does honesty. Speaking our truth and teaching our children to speak theirs has a powerful effect, empowering others in a virtuous cycle. We see this when one brave soul names an injustice, thus giving courage to more survivors and allies to speak up—whether it’s about defeating the stigma of illness or the silencing of sexual assault survivors, addressing systems of oppression, or raising a child who is noticeably “different” from his or her peers. Oppression and shame thrive on isolation and secrecy; speaking our truth is the path back into the world. Suffering is universal, and many would argue it is what makes us human. Your truth can help others more than you may realize, while your silence may unwittingly reinforce their isolation.
None of this is easy. It takes courage to speak your truth—whether to those who have hurt you or to those who love you (even when they are the same person). We encounter these moments when we confront a relative’s casual racism, let an irresponsible babysitter go, or confront our spouse about a thorny issue in our relationship.
reflection Which of your stories about the world might not be entirely true? What makes it difficult for you to speak up and tell the truth to others?
Use Your Words: Skillfully Telling and Encouraging the Truth
We all say things we don’t mean in the heat of the moment. Still, we can cause lasting damage when we make threats we can’t keep or tell our children that they’re spoiled or say “you’ll never understand” to our partner. The more we speak unskillfully, the more we create a world that reflects how we think and act. If we tell our son that he is bratty, we will come to see him that way. If we tell our partner they will never understand us, we will both give up trying to understand.
However, if we can stay calm, compassionate, and connected, we can more easily speak the truth effectively. “You’re a spoiled brat” becomes “You are acting entitled right now”—the latter isn’t quite as likely to shut your child down or create a fixed mindset in either of you (more on this in chapter 8). You could also choose to make an “I” statement, such as “I’m feeling taken for granted right now” or “I don’t feel we’re understanding each other right now.” These feelings are inevitable in any relationship, and this type of “I” statement is much more likely to be heard and more effective than using the language of blame and accusation. Of course, it can be frightening to be vulnerable in this way, but it serves all of us to find honest, skillful ways to speak our truth and to ask for what we need.
We can encourage truthfulness in our children by skillfully using language. For example, when it comes to cheating in sports or school, telling kids to not be “cheaters” may be more effective than telling them “don’t cheat.” Although many of us can justify cheating here and there, no one wants to consider themselves a “cheater.” In the past, many thought it was only struggling students who cheated; nowadays, it’s competitive college-bound students who are most likely to do so. According to a fact sheet from Stanford University, between 75 and 98 percent of college students reported that they had cheated in high school.6 There is also strong evidence that honor codes actually work to some degree; signed pledges at the beginning of paperwork or an exam (rather than at the end) may be most effective.7
Slippery Slopes
To put myself through graduate school, I tutored high school students. I vividly remember one father—a high-powered surgeon—saying as he interviewed me, “I’m sick of writing my kid’s damn papers. I’ve heard you’re good. Can you help him?” I patiently explained that I could certainly help his son write his papers, but that I wouldn’t write them for him. I spent a few dozen hours working with the sweet sixteen-year-old, helping him research, outline, and ultimately write a ten-page paper on the Trail of Tears. He finished it, bibliography and all, and felt proud at having done the work himself (for once). His first independent performance earned a B from his teacher; my performance got me fired by his dad. While not many of us would go so far as writing our kids’ papers for them, who hasn’t been tempted to touch up our child’s work before they hand it in?
And what are we to do when it seems like every other parent is, at a minimum, touching things up? It’s undeniable that not bending the rules may put our kids at some disadvantage. But we need to consider the long-term effects on their work ethic and self-esteem. One young woman I saw in therapy cheated just a little bit on her assignments. Her classmates, teachers, and parents saw her as gifted, but the fact that she knew she was cheating was slowly corroding her sense of self-worth, which led her to sneak vodka every night from her parents’ liquor cabinet. The gap between how others saw her and how she saw herself was increasingly unbearable. Eventually, the chasm of cognitive dissonance became too painful, and she allowed herself to get caught cheating (which also stopped her nightly drinking). While the admission was painful for her, it relieved the pressure she was placing on herself. In the long run, it also stopped the cycle of dishonesty about who she was and how she presented herself to the world. It may have also prevented potential substance problems down the road.
reflection What would you do to help your child “get ahead”? How might other parents in your community answer that question?
Cheating is hardly a victimless crime that ends with us—it’s a contagion. It does not end with the classmate who cheats; it actually spreads from there, passing the ethical dilemma to the next student and the next, until someone finally makes the difficult decision to stop. The good news is that the opposite is also true. While it may not feel good to be the only family not gaming the system, your family will be in a happier, stronger place in the long run. Trust that the hard-won honesty will spread. Even if it doesn’t turn the tide, it will at least slow it, bettering the world your child will inhabit.
Lao-Tzu’s “put things in order before they arise” approach is important here, too. There will come a day when you can no longer pick your child’s playmates, but when they are young, you can make informed decisions about a good number of the kids and adults in their lives. It took me a while to realize that the wisest way to choose a nursery school is not just by getting to know the teachers and curriculum but also by getting to know the other families. The same holds true for those of us who can afford to choose the community where we live.
Cultivating Honesty in Our Children
When we catch our child lying for the first time, it can be heartbreaking. Unfortunately, it’s an inevitable part of parenthood. For toddlers, the ability to get what they want develops before their moral compass does, which makes some evolutionary sense. In fact, lying can be a sign of maturity, intelligence, and even social development.8
I still recall feeling like a proud Papa when I gazed at my eight-month-old’s empty tray of pasta and cauliflower. My son is such an amazing eater, I thought to myself. He’s going to eat everything and grow up to be a real foodie, just like his parents (ignoring the fact that “eating everything” at that time also included rocks, grass, and his cousin’s toys). Plucking him from his high chair to give him a kiss before texting my wife the good news, I looked down only to notice that he’d managed to stuff all the cauliflower into the sides of his highchair. Fortunately, this doesn’t mean I’m the terrible father of a budding sociopath—30 percent of three-year-olds will lie or cheat if they think they can get away with it, and by age four, this percentage increases to 80 percent. The average four-year-old lies every two hours, and by age six, hourly!9
Most of these untruths from our young children are small cover-ups, but we need to be mindful of how we respond, because punishment can inadvertently reinforce dishonesty. It’s likely that our kids will keep lying because they don’t want to disappoint us with the initial crime. Therefore, our energy is best expended when we address the cover-up lie (to teach them about honesty), as well as the crime or accident they’re attempting to cover (if it’s important).
If lying comes to us so naturally and so early, how can we hope to teach honesty? In the past, we relied a lot on fables, though to mixed results. One study actually compared The Boy Who Cried Wolf with Pinocchio and the legend of six-year-old George Washington cutting down the cherry tree (“I cannot tell a lie”). Most of us might guess that of these, the tragic tale of The Boy Who Cried Wolf would be most effective in diminishing dishonesty. In fact, the more positive George Washington tale reduced lying by 75 percent in boys and 50 percent in girls, whereas the other two stories made no difference.10
Why might that be? Harshly punishing the lie—whether taking away dessert or becoming dessert for the wolf—unwittingly teaches that dishonesty is bad for the child as opposed to bad for the community. When we react to our kids’ lying with harsh punishment, research tells us it merely sets the stage to make children better liars. Overly harsh punishments can end up backfiring and making better liars out of our children. Studies indicate that people who believe they’ve been treated unfairly will justify taking something back as retribution.11 This tells us something about people who have been treated unjustly in our society, but it also points to the futility of authoritarian rules and punishments when dealing with kids; these harsh techniques actually create the conditions for worse behavior. Consider the young woman from chapter 2 who was stealing from her strict parents.
The most effective approach, therefore, is not to fear and shame the bad behavior but to draw out the best, honest behavior. Fairness, trust, and connection should take precedence over punishment. The most effective line, according to research, is to say, “I won’t be mad if you took the cookie, and if you tell the truth, I’ll be happy.”12 This works because kids want to make us happy.
This method of drawing out the best teaches our kids that the truth will make everyone—most importantly, us—happier. It will also make them happier. However, if we use this technique, we have to mean it and be happy if they admit to taking the cookie. This becomes especially important when they are teenagers and the stakes are higher. We want kids to feel comfortable telling the truth about sex and drugs and sneaking out at night so we can help them make the best decisions. We also need to let kids make their own mistakes—that’s part of letting them grow up, and one of the hardest.
Ideally, we give our children a chance to tell the truth. In the long run, this should be more important than today’s broken vase or tomorrow’s mysteriously missing cookie. If we make it safe for our kids to be honest, vulnerable, and reflective without getting mired in shame, they’ll develop the ability to admit that they’re wrong. Part of teaching kids to reflect is helping them see the larger social costs of dishonesty. A friend of mine described being dragged back to a store as a teenager to apologize for shoplifting. The shop owner explained that the theft was not merely a matter of a fifty-cent candy bar; the clerk would also have to tell her boss that the candy bar was missing, and the accountant would have to include that missing merchandise in their accounting, and the clerks would mistrust their customers and colleagues, and so on. My friend explained that when she was able to see the web of cause and effect of her seemingly minor transgression, she felt compassion for the suffering she’d caused. That is what kept her from stealing again.
As we’ve seen, children will lie for different reasons as they age. At first, they lie to get what they want. This is perfectly rational, when you think about it—they are neurologically incapable of understanding long-term consequences. And they lie in self-interest because, let’s face it, children are fairly self-centered in temperament and in how their brains are wired. They also lie to avoid punishment, even when we catch them with chocolate smeared all over their face and hands (when they get older, they’ll at least know to wipe the chocolate off their face first). As they get even older, kids may lie for attention or social empowerment, which can get increasingly risky.13 At this stage, instead of just punishing them for lying, we need to help them find better ways to get their social needs met.
reflection What did you lie about as a kid, and how did your parents respond? What do you do to cultivate a space in which your children feel safe enough to be honest with you?
The Truth about White Lies and Apologizing
How are we supposed to respond when our partner asks if an outfit makes them look fat? Do we force our child to tell Grandma how much they love that hideous plaid turtleneck they’ve just unwrapped for their birthday? Do we make them apologize on the playground, particularly when they don’t mean it? These scenarios reveal that the issue of honesty is not always cut and dry. There are often social and relational aspects of truth telling to consider.
Well, kids can always thank Grandma for the gift and leave it at that, but I’m afraid I haven’t yet figured out how best to respond to the “How does this dress make me look?” conundrum. Still, some considerations are worth digging into when it comes to those playground apologies. Many of us who recall forced apologies growing up probably primarily remember that they usually just led to a smug smirk the instant the adjudicating adult turned their back. We all also know how the power of an authentic apology can be profound. But forced apologies can unwittingly teach kids that apologies are short-term “get out of jail free” cards. As parents, we need to look honestly at the efficacy of those artificial apologies. Who are we actually trying to make feel better—the other child, their parents, or ourselves? Sure, forcing your kid to apologize can be a handy social lubricant on the playground, but some other approaches are worth considering when you have the time.
More effective than apologies are amends. Amends (think about amendments to the Constitution) are not apologies per se, but fixes and improvements. I recently watched my friend Julia suggest that her older son check in with her younger boy to see if there was anything he could do to make it better after the big one had knocked over the smaller one while playing. The younger boy responded that he wanted a hug, and the older offender offered one. I remarked on the profundity of the moment, and Julia laughed, saying, “It doesn’t usually go that smoothly, but that’s what we’re sort of aiming for.”
When we jump on kids to apologize for a minor infraction, we may inadvertently drive them deeper into defensiveness, especially if their brains are already shut down from the stress of a conflict. Worse, if our children associate apologies with shame or punishment, they are unlikely to spontaneously apologize in the long run. This is why Jane Nelsen (author of Positive Discipline) recommends “connecting before correcting”—get down to the child’s level and help them calm down if they just experienced conflict.14 Doing this allows them to bring their insular and prefrontal cortices online, which enables them to take the other child’s perspective and find a creative resolution to the conflict. From there, we might help kids reflect on how their behavior made the other child feel, encourage them to connect, and ask what they can do for the other child (if the other kid is willing)—whether this means an apology, a hug, or simply handing back the stolen toy. Kids who make things right in this way are found to act more altruistically down the road.15,16
One day, after we eventually get that dreaded phone call from school or from another angry parent about our kid’s behavior, we can talk through or even role-play what an appropriate amends might be. Some useful questions (again from Jane Nelsen) include the following:
• What happened, and why?
• What were the results, and how did they affect you and others?
• What did you learn?
• How can you make it better?
Sometimes a consequence might still be in order, but if a child can make genuine amends, our validating and encouraging that prosocial behavior is far better than punishment for its own sake. If we create a space in which children feel safe, calm, and nondefensive, they’ll be far more likely to make amends or apologize.
We can also model and practice apologizing and making amends for our children, as well as model receiving the same from others and practicing forgiveness. Another option is to share stories about times we’ve made mistakes and wish we could have behaved differently or made a heart-felt apology or amends. Relating with our children in this way not only changes the culture of our family but also nudges our larger communities toward problem solving, connection, and forgiveness—and away from a punitive culture of “zero tolerance” policies.
reflection What are your values around making amends or apologies? How do you model these for your kids? When was the last time you apologized or made amends to your partner or someone else in front of your children?
When we examine the science and wisdom of honesty, we find it may be more complicated than a matter of truth and lies. Honesty creates safety and freedom for everyone. While none of us will ever be perfect, we can all find more effective ways to teach the importance of truthfulness.