Lying about lying

Lying about lying--the title conjures up an image of your teen, fingers crossed behind his back, asserting, "It's the truth. That's really where I was. It's not a lie."

But that's not the lying about lying that I'm talking about. I'm talking about us parents. We lie all the time about lying. And when we do that, we damage our relationship with our kids. That's because lying, when done for the wrong reasons, damages relationships.

What we all want is a good relationship with our kids, right? That's how we will all get through their adolescence intact.

Even the ultra-conservative Dr. James Dobson, whom you would think would offer hard and fast rules about raising an adolescent once said: "Your main goal as a parent is to help them weather their adolescence."

And if we work at a good relationship now, maybe we'll even have a shot at a friendship with our kids when they reach adulthood. No guarantees, of course, but I, for one, am game to try.

But notice something said above. Lying damages relationships if it's done for the wrong reasons. Are there some right reasons to lie? Yes, and that's where we go wrong. We don't tell our kids the difference.

I'll explain. When we paint a black and white picture about lying vs. not lying, telling them they should never lie, it isn't true. Conscious of it or not, we're lying to them about lying.

When we dare to ponder this thought at all, we usually come up with the standard three exceptions to the rule:

1. Lying about a surprise party
2. Lying on the phone about who is home
3. Lying about how someone looks

Hopefully, we're telling our kids about these exceptions, but we should also tell them about the fact that lying has exceptions.

It backfires to say "no lying" and then to model lying. To say "no lying" and then to model lying wreaks havoc on our credibility. How can our kids ever trust us? We need to get honest.

There are more, though:

4. Lying to your nosy competitor at work that should have known better than to ask you about your company's secret plans
5. Lying to protect someone from serious harm
6. Lying that you don't feel well, and can't make it, when in fact you're in your first trimester of pregnancy and on ordered bed rest, and you're not ready to tell anybody the good news yet.
7. Criminal investigators know that "no comment" sometimes gives away too much information to the press. To protect evidence, they must say they don't have information that they do have. To give away too much evidence is to lose a chance at a cloaked confession from someone who knows details that no one else knows.

The list goes on and on.

The issue of lying is more subtle than "don't ever lie." Lying is complicated and nuanced--more so than we like to admit. A few salient points about lying:

1. Lying can bless people
2. Lying is part of being social
3. "Don't lie" is the wrong lesson
4. Whether a lie will hurt a relationship is a better lesson
5. Modeling and explaining are, together, the best ways to teach our kids discernment about lies

It's not even always easy to discern whether lying will hurt a relationship. In the case of the pregnancy, for example, your relative might understand afterward, but might not. In this case, know your own boundaries. If this is a relative who's likely to spill the beans before you're ready, you might have to take the chance of offending her, and stick to your lie for now. You're sort of sick, right? After all, you are lying down.

There are other boundaries around lying, too, aside from whether the lie will hurt a relationship.

We need to also consider: whether we could get caught, what are the consequences of getting caught, how we will feel about the lie, and sometimes...is it simply the right or wrong thing to do.

The able-bodied woman who gets away with parking in handicapped parking while her disabled husband isn't with her in the car may get caught, leading to the loss of the privilege of a handicap license for her husband. This could be a devastating consequence.

Some parents feel that Santa and the Tooth Fairy are lies. When their kids outright ask, they tell the truth. Other parents are fine with this kind of lie, as it furthers a fun childhood tradition, and the risk of hurting the relationship is nil.

The citizen who cheats on his taxes may feel just fine, but it's simply the wrong and unpatriotic thing to do. Inside all of us is a core of integrity against which we can measure certain decisions. Some people call it a conscience. And we all know when to call upon that integrity. We just know that it is wrong. Whether we choose to ignore our conscience is a different matter.

Clearly, lying is more complicated and nuanced than many of us have wanted to convey to our kids. But not explaining this fact is a terrible mistake.

We need to stop lying about lying, on the basis that this kind of lie is precisely the kind that hurts our relationship with our kids, possibly irreparably.

We need to instead engage in some rich, honest discussions about all the subtleties of lying, including how to discern when lying will damage a relationship.

Then we can tell our kids we trust their discernment, and can release them to use it. And watch what happens:

Watch how appropriate lying falls into place in a young teen in a way you wish you saw in a lot of adults you know.

Watch how quickly they catch on to not wanting to hurt relationships, including the one they have with you--after all, your wisdom is of such great value in their eyes.

And when you catch them lying to you appropriately, let it go.