On a recent shopping trip to Marshalls, Colleen Weston decided to skip the parenting advice about teaching kids life lessons at every opportunity. Instead of explaining to her son why he couldn’t have a toy that day, which surely would have triggered a tantrum, she took the easy way out: She lied.
“My son, who’s 3, started to fuss about wanting a toy, some gladiator or Transformers man I wasn't going to waste my money on,” Weston, 35, a Middletown, Conn., mother of two, recalls. “I told him, ‘That’s for 8-year-olds. The checkout clerk won't allow you to have it. You're too young.’”...
Whatever happened to understanding that a sin big or small (in our eyes) is still a sin? I remember a saying that Dr. Bob Jones Sr. used to remind us of: "Truth plus error equals error" and applied to this incident a little sin (lie) is ok - so let junior think that and soon he to will be telling mom and dad a "little" lie mixed with a "little" truth. Perhaps when he is older he will ask the same question as did Pilot, "What is truth?"
"If you buy into Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, what's another here and there?"
Begs the question. How does he know the above myths are harmless (assuming we agree on what "harm" means)?
If parents can fib now & then so as not to offend their children, perhaps scientists, politicians, & journalists can too, to avoid needless public alarm. But then, how do we know whether the researchers' quotes in the article, or the article itself, are credible?
1
There are a total of 2 user comments displayed | add new comment |