Little White Lies or Absolute Truth?
Last night I watched a new reality style game show “The Moment of Truth.” The show was like watching a car crash in progress. The more valuable the winning pot became, the more painful and damaging the questions became to the contestant and their loved ones.
This show really disturbed me. In fact, this is the second time I’ve written about it and probably won’t be the last. It just seems so wrong on so many levels.
While I try to teach my children that the truth is always the best policy, I believe I’ve done a good job in teaching them when it’s best to opt for telling a little white lie and when to tell the absolute truth.
There have been times when I’ve seen my boys shovel down food that’s been prepared for us and pay compliments afterward only to find out they were doing their best not to make horrible faces in the process.
There have been times when my kids have received a Christmas gift that they may already have, they kindly thank the person, point out all the wonderful things about the gift and never tell the truth out of respect and special care to not hurt someone’s feelings.
This brings me to my question — do you think it’s ok to teach your children to tell little white lies to spare someone’s feelings or do you think kids should be taught to tell the truth regardless of how painful the truth might be?
Personally, I’d rather not hurt anyone’s feelings – ever!
My son is still at the age where he is brutally, horribly honest (if there is such a thing). I’ve had to pull him aside on occasion, to tell him he couldn’t say that because the person could be offended or hurt.
So, yes, a white lie to spare the other person’s feelings isn’t such a terrible thing.
My son, Trenton, has a knack for being brutally honest. He gets it from his dad. So I try to teach my family (including my husband) that if a comment or a truth will hurt someone’s feelings, then it is best to leave it untold. That did not stop Trenton from telling a man with one eye that he looked like Cyclops. He didn’t mean it to be hurtful, rather pay the man a compliment. (sigh) There are some moments that I wish I had a roll of duct tape handy! LOL!
There’s often a false dichotomy lurking in these kinds of discussions: you can be “brutally honest” knowing full well that you are going to hurt someone’s feelings, or you can avoid hurting someone’s feelings by telling a lie.
The problem is, how do our kids discern the difference between little white lies and big fat whoppers? How many times will they tell us what they think we want to hear? “Dad, I was going to tell you I got Suzy pregnant, but I didn’t want to upset you.”
We need to reject the false dichotomy. We should care about other people’s feelings, *and* we should care about the truth.
Think about the maxim: “if you haven’t got anything nice to say, don’t say anything.” We should teach our kids that there are times we should say nothing at all, times we should offer guarded responses, and times when being direct and to the point (but not intentionally hurtful) is absolutely necessary.