Rearing functional, healthy children (physically and mentally) is difficult. Knowing just how to not "screw" them up can be especially challenging if you didn't have a functional childhood and/or example of how to go about doing it. Figuring how all this works for ourselves is tough enough without the added stress of how to teach our tender loves! The best advice I can give you on this, whatever your vantage point, is be honest with your children....Always! At whatever age they are always be appropriately honest. By that, I mean be honest but based on age speak to their level of understanding in age appropriate ways. Being age appropriate is key in not hindering their development. They don't need to know all the ins and outs for them to be okay...remember, you modeling good, functional, communicative behavior for them is not for you to feel better, but for them to learn and develop. Our children are not our therapists, friends, or side takers, but our responsibility to teach.
Lying to children is not only harmful to your relationship with them later, but it harms their functional development in the process. First, they are smart. Whether they tell you or not, they know when they are being "maneuvered". Second, in only showing them the reality we want them to know they falsely learn how life works. Our job is to teach them how to live, we cannot do that if we are giving them false understandings of how we live.
Lying to children is not only harmful to your relationship with them later, but it harms their functional development in the process. First, they are smart. Whether they tell you or not, they know when they are being "maneuvered". Second, in only showing them the reality we want them to know they falsely learn how life works. Our job is to teach them how to live, we cannot do that if we are giving them false understandings of how we live.
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