How To Teach Children to Value Honesty

"Just because your child lies doesn't automatically mean they're a bad person, and doesn't automatically mean you're a bad parent." Dr. Victoria Talwar, Ph.D.

However, it does signal to you that now is an important time to start talking about the value of honesty but it's important to start at a very young age with children.

The same mental abilities that it takes to lie are the same skills that make us human, such as perspective taking, self control, and empathy. What we need to teach them is how they can be honest in situations where it might be tempting, or even feel easier to lie than to tell the truth. So what are some ways that we can teach them?

Dr. Talwar presents how to foster conversations and moral discussions about honesty. But I'll tell you the stories that are most effective in actually affecting children's behavior. And those are the stories where a character does something and maybe they initially lie about it. But most importantly, they do come clean and tell the truth in the story at some point. And they then see the character, there's a positive reaction to them telling the truth.