Why Is Truth Important As A Parent?

Besides the financial and societal obligations you have as a parent, there are the moral obligations that you have when deciding to bring another life into this world. Sadly, it's these moral obligations that many seem to forget they have.

Raising a child is raising someone else in your own image, well if there are two parents raising the child it's two images. But ultimately, your child is going to take on strong traits from one parent primarily, that is just nature. In most cases, a girl is going to look up to her mother and a son is going to look up to his father.

My son is only three-years-old, but I have already seen the trust he has placed in me as a father and human being. My wife and I are essentially his world for the next few years until he starts to make friends at school and slowly gain little pieces of independence and personalised personality traits based on his interactions in life.

As a parent raising your children to be truthful in a world of deceit is easier said than done. But the truth to a child is everything, they can't really understand sarcasm, joking around or why promises get broken.

If you want to see what pure unfiltered sadness and disappointment looks like, make a promise to a young and impressionable child and then break that promise. It shatters their world. Even if the broken promise wasn't intentional (such as life getting in the way), all they know is you said you/they would do something and then took it away.

Setting the best example as a parent (besides being a decent human being) is understanding how important the truth is. As a general rule in life, people should be more truthful, but in an era of social media vanity, everyone is conditioned to lie and embellish the truth to get more followers and likes. No matter how hard you try, once you're in that mindset, you will subconsciously lie to those around you.

When your children ask you questions, answer truthfully even if it is a question like, "Where do babies come from?", "Is Santa real?" or, "Are you and mum getting a divorce?" just be honest. You're setting an example, and eventually, as the lies stack up the truth will come out.

As your children develop and grow older, if you raise them in a household built on the foundation of truth and honesty, they'll feel more comfortable telling you things they might otherwise think to lie about because you've lied, why can't they?

Set the example and they'll follow. Tell the truth.

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_{This is my entry for the fantastic @krnel competition here which I highly recommend entering. Image source Pixabay.}