Honesty

DADS: MODEL THE HONESTY WE WISH OTHER PEOPLE HAD.

Does it drive you crazy when you catch people lying? I don’t get it. And it’s often lying about the smallest things. By that I mean if they were honest we wouldn’t even care!!

Lying, embellishment, misleading has all become almost a norm in today’s culture.

Let’s fight back with brutal honesty and raise a generation with the same integrity and morals as ourselves.

Why do this? Why do we as dads need to care about being honest?

• You will build real credibility to be a strong influence on your kid’s life.
  1. If we lie to our kids, we will lose our credibility.
  2. They will not be able to decipher what lessons were lies and what lessons were real.
  3. If I teach my kids to tell the truth, then ask them to lie about their age at the park so I get a better price, I am sending the message of “Tell the truth when it is convenient and lie when it is advantageous for us.”
  4. If we lie in one aspect of our lives, then what makes the other things we teach them true? Past and future is no longer reliable.

• You will be modeling high integrity for them to witness first hand with eyes and ears.
  1. Nothing sticks long-term like when you see lessons in action day in and day out. The old lesson ‘more is caught than taught’ is real. If you want your kids to be honest adults nothing will be more important than them seeing you be consistently honest.
• It’s going to expose you. Show the real you. Your failures, mistakes, and shortcomings. Those become learning opportunities.
  1. None of us as parents are perfect, but we do need to be 100% honest and build credibility with our kids so that we are effective influences in their lives.
  2. Even if we mess up we should go back and admit it in order to save our credibility.
  3. It is better to say, “Daddy messed up when I did _____________. I’m sorry. Here let’s use this as a teaching moment. This is what I should have done.”
  4. This will establish the bond that I am there for my kids and even though I am not perfect, I am going to do what is best for you. Kids are sometimes way more perceptive than we give them credit for. I think it’s important for us to realize that our words and actions are under constant scrutiny cause these kids to watch and learn from us. 
• This is going to parlay into other aspects of your life and has profound effects.
  1. Let’s detour for a second, This is a focus on the dad aspect, but this directly and strongly relates to our relationships as a husband, friend, customer, son, etc.
  2. Integrity is key here. Being honest with people means not misleading or lying to them. Eventually, your BS will unravel, and you will be left with no friends and no career. 

I can already hear the naysayers.

But you lie about Santa and the Easter Bunny? Are you really going to tell your kids about sex, rape, molesting at the age of 4?

If the honest answer is not age appropriate, then we need to admit that. “Buddy you’re not old enough to know that answer, I’ll tell you when you are 11.”

Santa and the Easter Bunny, are all okay things in the Russell household. Santa lives in the North Pole. Fact. We don’t need to divulge that Santa is a fictional character. But the fictional character does live in the North Pole with his reindeer. 

We are age appropriate with our kids when it comes to make believe, superheroes, hard life facts, etc. 

If my kids, or some stuck up parent, wants to call me out on that aspect of honesty, I have no problem defending my position.

At a young age, I am all about encouraging my child’s imagination and creative influences.

I will fight imaginary ninjas in our fort with my boys. No need to sit them down and explain that there are no ninjas and it’s not a fort. Just sheets and boxes. I am also willing to protect their innocence.

Revealing too many hard life facts at a very young age will take some of the joy and innocence out of their childhood. They just aren’t ready. Children are not adults. We should not treat them as such. When we have raised them to be awesome adults, THEN we can treat them like adults.

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I am Townsend Russell with 100% DAD.

We’re preaching over here for Dads to step up, be real men, and real leaders of their homes.