Control and Trust

I write this post with the perspective of having two adult children one entering her last year in college and the other beginning his freshman year. One of the most difficult aspects of parenting is learning to trust your children when they are out of your control. When I say

"out of your control" I don't mean "out of control". There is only one word omitted from the latter phrase but it's an important one.

As with almost everything in parenting the secret to trust when your children are not in your presence is to start early and have open and honest communication. I always tried to stress to my kids the importance and fragility of trust. Once trust is broken it is difficult to regain that credibility. This harkens back to my last post of "Never Break a Promise (well almost never)". Breaking your promise is a break of the trust your children will have in you.

My son probably had the longest road to learning the value of trust. I'm a fairly strict parent and will waste no time instituting whatever form of discipline necessary for whatever infraction of the house rules. So my son started to not exactly tell the truth (to put it mildly) in an attempt to avoid said discipline. I stress the word attempt because his truth avoidance did not save him from consequence.

There were times when it was difficult to tell if he was the one responsible for whatever the problem was but more often it was obvious. Early when it was not clearly obvious that he was responsible there was nothing much I could do. But, when it was obvious I would point out that he was in trouble but the trouble would be much less had he been honest. In some cases, as when he made a terrible mess in the kitchen, I would have simply been a little angry with the punishment being making him clean it up. But, if he was not honest about how it occurred, especially when it was only he and I in the house and I certainly did not make the mess, the punishment would be for him to clean up the mess but also might include one or two days of being grounded (the grounding would depend on the severity of the offense).

Now, it is important to understand that his truth avoidance started around the age of 4 to 5 and ended around the age of 7 or 8. The ages are approximate because as they get older their childhood years start to blur a bit. During this time I endeavored to be consistent in my communication with him of what was happening and just as consistent with my discipline method. Over time he began to understand that I was unable to trust him in certain situations, specifically when he was not in close proximity to his parents and thus not in our control, because of his past actions and he didn't much like how that felt. Enforcing that feeling were the times where he had to shoulder the consequence when he may not have been the responsible party, as in when perhaps it was a friend causing the problem instead. I would point out that his past behavior resulted in a certain level of distrust and it was difficult for me to believe what he was saying. He also began to see that his sister enjoyed certain privileges at his age that he could not enjoy and began to rethink his actions. Throughout those years when he was young and struggling with the truth I always conveyed that while in certain circumstances I may not totally trust what he is saying this in no way diminished how much I loved him.

The big revelation came one day when he did something that was wrong and told the truth about what happened. Did he get in some trouble? Yes. But the punishment he received was far less than the punishment he would have received had he attempted to deceive. I went to great lengths to communicate my appreciation of his taking responsibility for his actions and I illustrated what the punishment would have been had he not come forward with the truth. From that moment on I have had very few reasons to distrust his word.

Now that he is 18 and ready to go off to college I trust that any problems will be minimal and if they are not he will not hesitate to let me know the full extent of the problems so we can minimize any consequences by facing it head on.