Parents Who Don't Follow Through Or Keep Their Word Teach Their Kids 11 Unfortunate Lessons
Nicoleta Ionescu / Shutterstock Most of us have come into contact with a kid who was just awful. Their behavior was terrible. A nightmare for any caretaker. They seemed to think they were infallible. And worse still, it’s clear their parents enable it.
Many of those parents don’t realize it, but when they don't follow through or keep their word, they teach their kids unfortunate lessons about how to behave based on their own actions. The best way to teach your children how to behave is to show them that you mean what you say. Otherwise, they’ll learn that their own poor behavior is unlikely to have problematic consequences.
Parents who don't follow through or keep their word teach their kids 11 unfortunate lessons
1. Actions don’t have consequences
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One of the hardest things for most parents to keep their word on is punishment. Most parents don’t like to punish their kids. So they may make idle threats about grounding or taking away their phones. This quickly turns into a bad lesson.
Parents who tell their kids what will happen and follow through on those promises are the parents who teach their kids that actions always have consequences. Parents who mention consequences that never happen tend to have kids who internalize the idea that consequences won’t apply to them.
2. You’re worth it, but only up to a certain price point
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Did you ever have a parent tell you that they’d bring you to a specific theme park if you got straight A’s? If you worked hard to get that trip only to have your parents tell you that they can’t afford it after all, you already know how heartbreaking it is. It hurts because you feel betrayed after working so hard to get what you wanted.
The funny thing is that this really isn’t normal behavior. Research published in Open Mind found that most people (around 88 percent) would rather keep their promise than keep the money they have. So, unless you had a parent who was truly broke, that speaks volumes about their priorities. It wouldn’t be shocking if you internalized it as a child.
3. Lying is how things get done when regular methods don’t work
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If you’re a parent who uses lies to motivate and direct kids, you are doing something known as “parenting by lying.” It’s a tempting path, since kids can be a hassle. However, psychologists have a warning worth listening to.
Ronald E. Riggio, Ph.D., shared that lying to your child significantly increases the likelihood that your child will become a frequent liar. As it turns out, kids internalize what you do in your day-to-day. If you use falsehoods to keep things going in your home, then your kid will likely assume that’s the way things get done in a healthy home.
4. Just because something is wrong doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it
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At face level, almost all of us can figure out that lying is wrong. So, what happens when you constantly see your parents lie? It’s simple: you start assuming that it’s not that big a deal. In some cases, kids can take this as a cue that other actions are also “wrong, but tolerable.”
So, this can become a bit of a slippery slope. At least one study linked “parenting by lying” to children who are more aggressive and more likely to behave in antisocial manners. In other words, they won’t see morals as objective. It becomes more of a subjective thing that might be excusable if they’re the ones doing it.
5. It’s better to come up with an excuse than to apologize
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If you’re like many people I know, one reason parents lie to their kids has to do with apologies. Some parents can never apologize. Rather than admit the truth of being at fault, they’ll deflect, come up with an excuse, or just remain silent.
This can be caused by a wide range of reasons, including beliefs about social hierarchy, moral issues, or a fear of appearing weak. However, children tend to be a bit wiser about the real message. They’ll pick up that same habit, including coming up with some fake excuse as to why they shouldn’t say sorry.
6. Mom and Dad don’t always know best
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What happens when you find out that a parent’s lie causes serious damage to your future? In some cases, parents will lie to their kids as a way to encourage them to choose a specific path in life. Or worse, they will lie by omission as a way to guide kids, only to feign ignorance when the truth is revealed.
Parents who lie by omission are going to end up having a lot of explaining to do when their kids realize they were just playing dumb, and that’s the good outcome. If they feign ignorance, well…your kids are going to assume that you’re not always the brightest bulb in the room.
7. You can trust your friends more than your family
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Believe it or not, friendships tend to naturally supersede familial relationships in many ways. Research has shown that kids who have more friends in school tend to have better work, mental health, and romantic outcomes later on in life.
Friends offer a lot of influence on a growing child. However, one thing should remain true: your kids should trust you more than their friends. They should feel like they can rely on you for anything. Repeated lying can eat away at that trust, which means you might end up seeing your kids ask their friends’ parents for help over you.
8. Appearances matter more than the truth
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Most of us have lied to other people to “keep the peace” in a social setting. Sometimes, that’s the best possible move you can make. Of course, there’s a certain point where it stops being a good go-to move and starts covering up things that honestly should be addressed.
Kids are going to notice if you’re screaming at your spouse over bills, only to laugh and splurge in front of friends. They’ll notice if you coach them to say that certain things aren’t happening in the house. Unfortunately, they’ll start to fall into the same patterns, which could make them way too influenced by what others think.
9. Lying is acceptable
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There isn’t a parent out there who hasn’t fibbed to their child once in a blue moon. However, most parents at least try to keep their relationships on a basis of general honesty. A white lie once in a while can be good, but if your child starts to see you regularly lying to anyone and everyone, something will happen.
Kids take their sense of morality from parents. If they realize that you don’t see anything wrong with lying, they’ll assume you’re lying when you tell them that lying is bad. This can lead them to think that lying isn’t actually morally wrong, when, in fact, it is.
10. Your family might abandon you at any time
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True story: I had a friend who was abandoned by her parents. Her dad left her at the hospital for a slight cold. He promised that he’d come back in an hour, and he never came back. The hospital called, and he openly refused to bring her back home. She felt he had lied before, but that was the only time he was caught lying.
I met her 10 years after that happened, and she never fully recovered. She was absolutely petrified of abandonment, and no amount of soothing could ever change that. That’s what her father taught her.
11. No one is ever honest
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So, here’s another observation that I’ve noticed among people who grew up with parents who were always lying. I noticed that they just assume that people all lie, no matter who they are, to get what they want. If caught in a lie, one of these individuals even shrugged and said, “Well, everyone lies.”
That’s a pretty grim way to look at humanity. It’s a sign of a person who became jaded and apathetic by the time they were a kid. If you’re a parent who wants to raise a child who has faith in others, keep your word, and you won’t see that behavior from others.
Ossiana Tepfenhart is a writer whose work has been featured in Yahoo, BRIDES, Your Daily Dish, Newtheory Magazine, and others.
