Dishonesty by child breaks parents' hearts

For nearly five years my son, Braden, has been a source of nothing but pure pleasure for my wife, Jenny, and me. Ever since he was born on St. Patrick’s Day during a snowstorm in 2005, we’ve taken joy with everything he has done, both good and naughty, as the innocence only a child could display through his actions has always made us smile or laugh, or it has allowed us to add one more story to our files we could taunt him with when he’s older.
But he did something last week that was not so innocent and made me realize he’s growing up faster than I want him to grow up. He blatantly lied to me.
The lie occurred when I picked him up from his daycare. Like I usually do, I asked both his teacher and him what type of day he had. The daycare uses a color system – green for good, yellow for not-so good and red for bad – to assign a behavior rating for each child every day. Braden is usually yellow, while occasionally green and sometimes red, and we’ve been working with him to become green all the time.
When I arrived, he immediately told me he had a green day, much to my happiness. His teacher, who only had him for an hour or so, did not dispute him.
But when I was putting him in my car, I simply asked if he was on green at both schools – one school being the daycare and the other being the 4K classroom he goes to in the afternoon. He hesitated before saying yes.
His hesitation caused me to dig a little further. “So, if I called Miss Lindsey,” I asked, “she would tell me you were on green at 4K?”
This is the point where his lie fell apart. He started crying and insisted I shouldn’t call her, mainly because I didn’t have her number. Of course, I lied and said I did, and that I was indeed going to call her.
I assumed he would come clean then, with my empty threat exposing his lie. He kept crying, insisting I shouldn’t call and that he wasn’t on green.
This continued for 20 minutes until we got home. I explained the situation to Jenny. She agreed his actions seemed suspicious, and we asked him numerous times whether or not he was lying about his color, explaining we couldn’t understand why he was so opposed to us calling his teacher.
We finally agreed that he may be telling the truth, and that the issue would be resolved the next morning when I could ask his teacher about his day. Braden agreed to the measure, which made us think he wasn’t lying and that we were being too hard on him.
The next day, when I asked his teacher, I learned he was indeed lying, as he was on yellow. She said he wasn’t listening to her when the kids were sitting on the carpet during story time, a minor offense had he been honest about would have merited just a stern “don’t do it again” from us.
Instead, knowing he had been dishonest with us and that he tried until the last second to get away with it, I felt my heart being pulled apart in 12 different directions. One part was upset with the lie, the second part mad he couldn’t come clean with us when given the opportunity, the third part angry he was old enough to lie, the fourth part sad he wasn’t young enough to not lie, the fifth part disturbed he was naughty in the first place, the sixth part concerned we may have forced him to tell the fib, the seventh part irritated he wasn’t smart enough to lie in a way we could have remained oblivious to it, and the eighth part annoyed I’ve had to come up with so many synonyms to “upset” in describing my feelings without repeating myself.
Braden knew I was disappointed with him, so he became quiet, refusing to look me in the eye, give me a hug or say goodbye when I left.
In my car, on the way to work, I realized he was human, like the rest of us, and that I couldn’t expect perfection from him. I also realized we needed to address the situation, as we didn’t want him to think it was acceptable behavior.
After talking about it with Jenny, we decided we weren’t going to make him feel bad for his behavior by lecturing him about it. Instead, we decided, we were going to set up a consistent award-and-punishment system that would make our expectations clear to him.
On green days he would receive a quarter for his piggy bank, and on red days we’d take a quarter away. His piggy bank, which he can spend however he wishes when he has enough money, would neither increase nor decrease on yellow days.
He could only watch television in the evening if he had a green day, making it a reward for good behavior.
He crabbed at the rules at first, as we did not allow him to watch television that evening for his behavior the day before. He quickly realized, though, he was getting off easy for the crime, so he accepted it and had a good night playing with his toys.
After a week with these new rules, he seems to understand them. He’s avoided red days, but he’s only had a couple of green days. I’m hopeful that as we grow and learn as parents we’ll help him produce more of them. And I’m hopeful he won’t try pulling a fast one on us again until he’s at least a little older. I don’t want him perfecting his technique now, because then he may get away with bigger and scarier lies as a teen. I want to be able to stop them then, too.