4. Dealing with Lying in Your Child, Part 1. Plus, Val's Daughter, Becca & Toddler Manners.

(Part 2 of Dealing with Lying can be heard in Episode 12).
Today you're listening to  Episode 4, "Dealing with Lying in Your Child, Part 1." For the first ten min of the episode, Val is joined by her grown daughter, Becca who has two preschoolers. They discuss some techniques for developing Manners in your toddler.
Then the final 20 min of the episode focus on how to handle lying in children elementary-age and up, including Root Parenting vs Surface Parenting and Mercy Seat Parenting.
Steps to Dealing with Lying:
1. Slow down to take time to do it well in order to preserve your relationship and to be the most impactful in reaching their heart on the issue.  Fight the urge to be reactionary.
2. Let your child know that you need to take some time to pray while they're taking time to reflect on why they did it and possibly praying also. In this step you really are getting God's direction on what to do next.
3.Evaluate if lying is a regular habit in your child or if it hardly ever happens (months between times).
4.Evaluate how you as a parent have been modeling truth - valuing TRUTH, valuing truth in your relationship with your child AND in your relationship with God?
5.Root parenting vs. Surface parenting.  Evaluate what is going on in their heart right now?  Being a barometer.
6. Go back to your child and ask questions. Not getting emotional or defensive with their answers. 
7.Mercy seat parenting. This step will be explained in part 2 of Dealing with Lying in your Child

Resources:
Being a barometer of your child's heart is taught in Val's book, Wearing All Your Hats Without Wearing Out. https://www.practicallyspeakingmom.com/product-page/wearing-all-your-hats-without-wearing-out-from-chores-to-character-issues-to-ch?fbclid=IwAR0ktH4g78ZOJomwMe3_Ho9eSbcBAsX9WpHvjVAby8Ig9tLLZqE85EaHShs

Root Parenting is taught Val's books Clash in Your Home: A Game Plan for Cleaning Up the Conflict. https://www.practicallyspeakingmom.com/product-page/clash-in-your-home-a-game-plan-for-cleaning-up-the-conflict-our-family-god-s-m?fbclid=IwAR0ktH4g78ZOJomwMe3_Ho9eSbcBAsX9WpHvjVAby8Ig9tLLZqE85EaHShs
and Wearing All Your Hats Without Wearing Out (linked above)

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Transcript

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Val 0:00

You're listening to t he practically speaking mom podcast, the place for an intentional mom to build a strong family. Today we're joined by a special g uest. We'll spend 10 minutes on the topic of manners in preschool aged children a nd then I'll switch gears with you and we will do p art one of dealing with lying in our children.

0:30

I'm excited to have a fun guest on our show today. This is my second oldest daughter, Becca, and she has two little boys that happen to be the cutest g randsons in the world. They are almost t wo and just turned three.

Becca 0:52

Hi, thanks. I'm really excited to be here.

Val 0:54

Becca has been visiting for the last week here with the two little boys and it's been so fun for me. You know what? I think one of my favorite parts of having the boys here is Asher, the 23 month old. He has this little food dance. Every time you put his food in front of him to eat, his little body just starts t his little dance. He's so happy to have his food. Okay. So we're just going to take a couple minutes at the front of this podcast. Today's episode is really about dealing with lying in our kids. But I thought it would be nice to just start out for a minute and talk about the age group of your kids because you're just on the very start of when they would start lying. So we'll talk about that in just a minute. But first I wanted to talk manners with you because you have done a great job at teaching your little guys to have manners. I know you picked them up the 23 month old from the nursery the other day and they said when it was time to come in from the playground, he just kept saying, no thank you. No thank you. They're so sweet with their manners. So, h ow did you do it?

Becca 2:12

I think probably something you talk a lot about on here is consistency. And that has definitely been the biggest thing is just, all the little things from the beginning when they're old enough to start making requests. U sually, it starts with si gn language a nd one of the first signs I taught them was please and that was how they would ask for something, they would r ub their chest, which is the sign for please. S tarting from the beginning before they even know what the words mean, they're just learning that's how you request something and then it's kind of already ingrained. And when they start to learn actual verbal language, they're able to voice that also. And just consistently, whenever they're asking for something, or r efusing something. Earlier I was playing with Asher and I said, "Oh, can I tickle your leg?" Playfully. And he said no, and I said, " Asher we say, 'no thank you'." You know, even in all the little moments, just noticing that and catching it and, it doesn't have to be a stern thing. You know, I was playing with him and tickling him and it wasn't, it was still a playful moment. And just reminding him like, Oh, it's no thank you. And then respecting that I think is also really big. Respecting what they're saying. If they're having an attitude about something, I know the other night you experienced this mom. When Asher decided he decided he did not want whatever, I don't remember the meal we were having, but he was mad about it and he started, he's a screamer. So he gave us a good scream and had the attitude. And so it was immediate action of I took him aside and "Asher,, you are not going to treat our family that way. Having that attitude and disrupting their dinner. So you're gonna turn around, I'm going to turn your high chair facing the other way and you're going to work out these emotions. And then when you're ready to apologize and be nice, then we can turn around and eat with the family again." So talking him through it, talking him through why it's not okay, why it's not loving your family to do that.

Val 4:09

well it was super cute. I mean, if it can be cute for a little one to throw a fit. So he, you know, he did continue to fuss for maybe 30 seconds and then he was quiet for maybe another 30 seconds. And then you heard an, I'm sorry mommy. So sweet. I mean , he's 23 months old, but when we are consistent with them and really letting them experience that you're not gonna reward their bad behavior. At every age of life there is some conformity that needs to happen for a society, for a community, for a family to run smoothly, we need to have some systems. And that includes manners as well, the way to treat people. And sometimes I think it's easy to think that since they're young, they're really too young to get it, but they really get it a lot sooner than we think. Another time that I saw this week with that , um , with Asher, the 23 month old, he was saying, I don't want to, I don't want to. And you would tell him, we don't say, I don't want to, we say no thank you. No thank you. And it's teaching them to honor others with their words. And you know, there's three things that we want to focus on training with our kids is their actions, their attitudes and their words. And I just really love how, how great a job you're doing Becca with your boys on that issue. So let's just switch gears for a minute. We will have you on another time to talk about toddlers more. But this episode today is about lying. So I thought I would ask you, what age did you start seeing the older one, who just turned three. His name is Jamey. So when did Jamey start lying do you think?

Becca 6:09

I really think the first time I noticed it was maybe in the last two months. It was very recently and it really took me off guard. I thankfully my husband was home at the time, so I was able to kind of look at him like, did that really just happen? I wasn't ready for this, you know, cause of course you're never ready for whatever negative behavior that you're going to have to deal with. So I don't even remember the specific situation, but I think it was Jamey and Asher got into something in the other room that they weren't supposed to. And I came in and found it and I asked him what happened here and it, I think it was something from a high shelf that I was pretty sure only Jamey could reach. And Jamey blamed Asher. And since I wasn't there, I hadn't had eyes on the situation to know if it was a full on lie or if it, if it really had been somehow Asher. So I was kind of, unsure of how to deal with it. So the way I talked to him about it in that situation was I brought him close to me and I looked him in the eyes and I was like, Jamey, I really want to believe you because your word means so much to me. Our words and truth are so important. So I'm going to believe you right now because I wasn't here, but I need you to be telling me the truth. And I kind of explained truth is when I told him a different scenario of what truth versus what lying looked like, that he could kind of understand. Cause that's a hard concept for a three year old to understand. You know, it's not something visible that they can see. So giving an example can kind of help them understand it better. And then in that situation, since I wasn't there, I wasn't able to really give consequences since I wasn't sure if they were needed or not.

Val 7:59

Yeah, well what you said that you made it important. You reiterated to him the importance of truth and his words and that his words matter and whether he was telling the truth or not in that situation, he found out that mommy really cares about truth. And that's what we can do in those situations where it is unclear cause Oh my, there's going to be lots of those times as a parent where you're not really sure either what's going on in their heart in a situation or what took place. But at least you can reiterate to them what is a value in these situations. And if you are consistent about that and if you go into the next stage, kind of having an idea of what is going to be your plan of action and you know, cause you're definitely at that stage where there is a fine line of how much they can comprehend. So definitely a three year old or a two year old has much more limited comprehension than a five-year-old. So it can be really difficult at any age to figure out what should the consequences be or what should my next action be as a parent in this situation. But it's especially difficult with toddlers and preschool aged kids.

Becca 9:23

Yeah, definitely something I'm learning is the more ahead of the game I can be the better. So obviously we're not God, we don't know the future. We don't know what exactly is coming. But at least having on your radar, like typically in this age of kid, these are the things that start to come up next. Also being a student of your child and seeing this is what their tendencies are. So in this case, okay, well now we know that Jamey has a possibility of lying, in the near future to us. So what is our action going to be in that situation? So my husband, Dakota and I were able to sit down later and say, okay, this happened today. We weren't sure if he was or not, but that is now on our radar that that you know something that kids do in the future, so what will our action be? How are we going to deal with that in those situations? We were able to figure out this will be the consequence and then in the future when it does happen with Jamie, if it's a situation where we're not sure like this first time was I would talk to them about if you're not telling me the truth and mommy finds out, I'm going to have to give you this consequence because I love you too much to let you go through your life not telling the truth, you know? So having that explained to him, again, he won't always understand it at first, but the more you explain, the more they grasp and know the importance of and they see how much you do love them because you're willing to sit and explain that to them and help them really understand it.

Val 10:55

Absolutely. In fact, consequences when when it comes to lying, something I always told you kids was, this is what the consequences going to be if lying happens. But if you come and tell me the truth on your own accord in a difficult situation where you know, where normally you would get in trouble for whatever it was that happened, but you come and you tell me honestly about it. I'm going to celebrate the truth and I'm going to have great mercy in that situation. I'm just going to be so thankful that you were truthful and so proud of you for being truthful that it's going to be, I'm going to be really happy with you. Really reiterating it all the time with you kids, it made a huge difference, in your honesty.

Becca 11:51

I totally agree with that and I'm so thankful that I did learn that from you because I've seen Jamey telling the truth in hard situations for a long time now. So he had already been learning the value of truth before he ever learned the, the danger of a lie. There would be situations where he had gotten into something and he and I would come and ask what happened here and he would tell me, I did this and I would be able to tell him like, Oh baby, you know, that's not okay, but I am so proud of you for telling the truth. So it, it turned into moments of cherishing, being able to tell him I'm proud of him and still talking to him about how whatever he had done was not okay , but that he was such a good boy and just such good honesty there. So he had already learned the value of honesty, even though he didn't know what that was before he had to learn the hard lesson of the danger of a lie ,

Val 12:50

Right. Celebrating what you want repeated in your child. That is what you're really talking about here. So awesome job and I look forward to having you on again soon. And now we're just going to go into the rest of our show about lying issues with kids that are older than preschool. On a recent Facebook live, I told you we would tackle the issue of lying in our children. And so I want to do that on today's podcast. So first of all, what is lying? Well at our house it is telling something that's not true, being deceptive or withholding information that is pertinent to the situation. Like for example, I'll tell the kids, I should not have to ask the perfect question to get the truth out of you. Truth should be something that you are clinging to and and seeing as a top priority in your life and who you are as a person. So truth should be easily forthcoming from you. As I'm talking to all of you, I realize I am talking to parents, to moms who have a two year old that's just learning how to lie. And I'm talking to moms that have an 18 year old that may have just been deceptive with them. So there's a wide range of who I'm speaking to today. So some of it will apply and some of it won't. You'll just have to adjust it to your life situation and where you're at. So what is lying? Well, primarily it is an act of self preservation. Protecting yourself from the truth, whether you are lying to yourself or whether you are deceiving someone else, you are trying to preserve what you want over what is reality. The other thing about lying is that it is breaking relationship with the person that that is being lied to. Its saying, I value hanging on to whatever I want truth to appear to be right now. I value that more than I value my relationship with you. A relationship without honesty is a fake relationship in my opinion. Now, I will have to tell you at our house being honest is the top character issue. All of my kids would tell you that I hold that as a much higher issue than any other one that they could be dealing with such as, I don't know, laziness or not following through, disobedience. This one, to me is the top one because it breaks relationship between the one who's lying and God and it breaks relationship between that person and whoever they're talking to. As I have viewed relationships as a vital importance in a home, therefore honesty is a top character trait that I'm going to just be a bulldog about making sure it's a priority with each one of my kids. And I shouldn't really use the term bulldog Because I'm going to talk to you pretty soon about the concept of mercy seat parenting and what an important role that plays in dealing with a character issue in our child. We know that we have come up with our definition of lying in our home. You guys need to do that in your home. Like I said, for me it's being dishonest in any way. Deceptive withholding information, all of that in there.

16:38

Now the next little caveat that I want to say here is I never call my kids a liar. I will tell them, you are a person who tells the truth. You love truth, you value truth, and so you lying does not fit with that. That is not who you are. And so that is something that's really important to me. Also, really from learning the hard way with some of my older kids, I was not careful enough with the labels I would give them in a situation. And so I learned to be vigilant about not giving them a negative label. I do not want them to make their self identity something related to any negative quality or any character trait problem. I want to be a visionary mom who's letting them see that I believe in who they were meant to be and who they were called to be. And who they were created to be. Not just see them as who they are in this moment today, so that's being a visionary mom. I talk about it quite a bit in my book Wearing All Your Hats Without Wearing Out. I just want you to know that I feel like it's really important to never label my child a liar because I don't want them to take on that identity.

Val 18:02

Next thing I want to talk to you about it related to this is root parenting versus surface parenting . Our tendency is a situation comes up where we find out that they had been lying or they confess or any form of lying. Our tendency is to want to react right then and instead what you really want to do in any important aspect of your parenting is take a step back and be able to really take a deep breath and slow down. You want to preserve your relationship in this process and you want to deal with their heart issue. You don't want to just be reactionary to the immediate situation at the moment. You want your response to be much more thorough and effective than that. So the first step is really to preserve your relationship by slowing down to respond rather than reacting. Sometimes when I do this, I will tell my kids, "you know what? This situation is very big and very concerning and I know that I am feeling a lot of emotions right now. Feeling sad about this too . Feeling nervous about what this might represent and so I need to take a step back and pray. I need to pray before I respond to this issue. Now a lot of times I'll say, w hile I'm praying, I want you to go and sit on that chair over there and you pray too and you be reflective about why did I do what I did and what's going on with that and you know, asking God to help reveal to you what might've been going on in your heart or your your mind at that time. But I need to go pray because I really need God to help me do this the right way. This is way too important of an issue for me to just react right now. So when I do tell my kids that I'm going to go pray about something, they know it's serious and I think that's a good thing. We want our kids to be able to recognize what is most important to us, what are top priorities to us and, and taking this time is part of that. So speaking of time, you know your child's heart is a time consuming venture. You are tending the garden of your child's heart. Do gardens grow overnight? No. Do they change tomorrow? No. This is a longterm process and we don't see the results immediately and we can get discouraged about that, but we need to hang in there and remember that what we're working on is for that future harvest, not for just immediate change or immediate impact. So taking some time to step back and collect your thoughts and truly pray about it. You really do want God to intercede in the situation. You want him to start working on their heart right now and an opening them up to be able to receive whatever you're going to come back and talk to them about and you want them to be um, changing their heart. And so you need the God creator who created that child who created your family relationship, you need him to get more involved as involved as possible. And so he asks that we would pray when we want to seek him, when we want to seek answers from him. So take the time to do that. All right.

21:38

The first thing that you want to start doing once you're ready to go deal with them is you want to have evaluated how much of a problem is lying with this child. Is it a regular habit or does it hardly ever happen? And this is a really rare occurrence. That's one thing you want to evaluate. Another thing you want to evaluate is how have you as a parent been modeling about truth? Have you been a parent that is honest, even when it's hard to be honest. And I don't mean you know, there are some topics that are not appropriate for kids. And I'm not talking about that. I'm not talking about wearing your brain on your lips so that everything that's in your mind comes out your mouth. I am talking about you valuing truth, you valuing the relationship, you valuing your relationship with God. He calls us to be truth bearers, and to, to not conceal things. So before you deal with your child, you really need to evaluate how have you been doing on this.

Val 22:46

So this applies in any kind of character situation that you're dealing with your child, you need to evaluate it in yourself first. There have been a lot of times when I have evaluated how I am in a given character issue and I realize from that time of evaluation that I need to apologize that either I haven't been a good example in this area and I believe that I have grieved the heart of God and my poor actions in that area. Or I may need to apologize that you know, while I have had God's standard and lived by it, I have not required you to child. I have not. I have not expected you to live to God's standard in this issue by following through with consequences when you, when you do this. So I am so sorry that I did not give you consequences when I should have , because what I really did by not giving you consequences was I said, it's not as big of a deal as God says it is. It's not as valuable an issue as God says it is. So a lot of times when I come back to the child, I have to start with apology. Now what does that do? What would the different reaction be in your child? How would they react differently to you? A responding in anger and tenseness about the situation or be starting with apologizing for how you haven't handled the past well in this area, which one is gonna leave them more open to the next step that you want to go to and that is affecting their heart. Now I have to tell you right off the bat, I still stink at this on plenty of days. I don't have it all together. I still do some reacting instead of responding. And I'm getting way, way, way better than I used to be, but I still have a long way to go. So mom, don't feel discouraged about how you have been handling things like this up to this point. Just feel excited that God has brought you to this moment today where we're talking about this together and he says, you're ready now , uh , to make some changes in how you respond instead of react in difficult parenting issues, situations. So what I've been talking to you about is how to deal with the child. Now I've also talked to you about evaluating first, are they in a habit of this or it hardly ever happens? How am I modeling about this character issue in this case, truth. How have I handled previous responses to my child? Have I given them consequences? How have I handled it? Um, so we've been doing some evaluation of the past. Now the next phase really is to evaluate what's going on right now. Not even particularly this exact situation that has come up, but what's going on in their heart? Where are they at? If you could take inventory of their heart, what would you start to see today? And this is called root parenting versus surface parenting. Surface parenting. We react right away to the situation instead of really going beneath the surface and digging deep to discover what's going on in the complex recesses of your child's heart. Now, root parenting requires a few things. It requires mom to be something I call a barometer that is a barometer, is measuring , um , something that you can't see with your eyes. It's measuring what's going on that's not visible and God has just given moms a , a special ability to do this. It doesn't mean we automatically know what the problem is. It just means we recognize there is a problem. So kind of starts first by you want to be prayerful today, even if you've got no issue going on with your child today, which is unlikely, of course, because they're human and we are too. So we haven't parented perfectly and they're human and haven't been living perfectly, so you probably have issues going on a day, but let's just say that you didn't even then you want to be praying that God would help you to be a better barometer in your child's life. More tuned in to what's going on in their heart . I'm really having big red flags that go off when little bitty symptoms show up, so pray that you would be a stronger barometer. I, that's another issue that I talk about in the book. Wearing all your hats without wearing out. There's four main hats than a mom should be wearing. One of those is visionary. Like I mentioned earlier, one of those is barometer. Now we sense that something is wrong. In this case we got a huge red flag because we actually saw that our child lied or experienced that our child withheld important information that would have made a difference in the situation or they were deceptive in some way and we didn't label them. We just told them, this grieves the heart of God. I've got to go spend a little time praying before I deal with this. So I respond instead of react. I need you to sit over there and you'll be reflective and you pray and you think evaluate what was going on in your heart in the situation. While I'm praying too , and we're gonna work on this together in a little bit. So now you've been off by yourself praying and then kind of reviewing the past, you know, habit or hardly a problem. How have you been handling it in the past with your own self and then in consequences with them when those things come up. Now we are in route parenting where we want to figure out what's going on. So this often requires going back to your child and just asking questions, not getting defensive with their answers, being quick to listen and slow to become angry. In this process, there's probably a lot of things you're gonna want to say, but try to resist and just ask questions and try to understand what was going on in the situation. Now sometimes in that asking and listening to answers process, it's going to start revealing some things that were not even about the situation. And also you may need to ask some questions like that, you know, to try to reveal what else is going on in their life besides this. So root parenting versus surface parenting. Okay. The next thing that you want to think about in situations like this is I call mercy seat parenting. I learned about mercy seat parenting from the heavenly father and a time that I would call the biggest belly of the whale time in my life. I had several things going on that some of them were not my fault at all, but some of them were. Um, uh , I was experiencing a lot of pain in my life in various areas. Um, but one of those areas had to do with parenting. My oldest daughter, my oldest child at that time, I mean she's still my oldest child, but it was my daughter. And at that time I was recognizing that I had actually been doing a really lousy job at parenting in a lot of ways. I had tried really hard and I met well but I had been completely overlooking some really, really key aspects that had negatively affected my daughter. Sometimes we can create wounds we don't even know exist and you know, praying and asking God to reveal those to you is hard to pray, but what a blessing it is to find out about them because then you can start healing and correcting.

Rich, Val's hus 30:56

Hey moms, we're going to have to break here for part one of dealing with lying in your child wherever you are in your intentional parenting journey. We hope that you have been encouraged with some practical steps you can take to deal with the heart of your child and not just their actions. In part two of this talk vowel will explain just what she means by the belly of the whale experiences and what can happen through those times. Please be sure and join her for part two of dealing with lying in your child. You can find today's show notes and transcript@practicallyspeakingmom.com there you'll find valves , blog books, and the six rooms of the intentional moms home. If you found this podcast to be helpful, we would be honored if you would share it with others. Subscribe to the podcast, follow her blog, and join in the practically speaking moms online community through Instagram and Facebook. At practically speaking, mom, you can also join the intentional mom, strong family private Facebook group to interact regularly with vow and lots of other intentional moms. Again, that's the private Facebook group, intentional mom, strong family. Val is looking forward to spending time with you again next week. Right here on the practically speaking mom podcast. The place for an intentional mom to build a strong family.