During the holidays, I was standing in line at the skating rink ticket office. In front of me was a family with a child. The parents were instructing the child on how to lie about their age at the ticket counter so they would pay a lower entrance fee. “Don’t make the same mistake as last time when you told the truth!” Dear parents, I thought to myself, in two or three years you will be asking the class teacher or school counselor what to do because your child is lying and hiding grades, etc.

We are not sufficiently aware of how important our example is in upbringing. If honesty and truthfulness are generally important values in a family, the child will also adopt them. However, a child will not “robotically” repeat your behavior and only lie at the ticket counter while understanding in all other situations that they must be honest. How can they possibly understand and evaluate this differently in each situation?

In my counseling practice, I often meet parents who, at the beginning of adolescence, start expressing helplessness in raising their child. They are hurt by dishonesty, because they are not properly informed in time about what is happening with their child. Some children lie for the reasons mentioned above—they have learned (incorrectly!) from poor role models that lying can bring them some benefit.

Others lie to avoid unpleasant consequences (punishment), whether it is scolding, shouting, or restrictions such as taking away a phone, tablet, or computer, or temporary bans on TV or socializing with peers. All of this is unpleasant for the child, and they want to avoid it. In that moment, the intense feeling of distress prevails—not rational awareness that hiding the truth will ultimately lead to even greater parental anger and consequences once the truth comes out.

Let me also shed light on lying and honesty from a psychological perspective: we distinguish three levels of moral development (Kohlberg).

At the first level (pre-moral level), a preschool child acts purely according to their own interests and based on pleasant or unpleasant consequences. They follow rules because it brings them some benefit (praise, affection, approval, or avoidance of punishment).

At the second level (conventional level), a school-aged child is already able to take another person’s perspective and primarily strives to follow rules out of a desire for approval from important people or groups they belong to (family, peers).

At this level, there are two sub-stages. The “good boy/good girl” stage (up to around age 12–13) is characterized by the child defining good behavior as what important adults approve of, and bad behavior as what they disapprove of.

The next sub-stage is typical of adolescence; it requires the ability for abstract thinking. It is characterized by strong respect for authority, social rules, norms, and laws. The adolescent thinks in terms of maintaining the social system: “What would happen if everyone behaved like this?” They want to be a “good citizen.”

The third level (post-conventional moral development) is reached by only about 10% of adults. These individuals develop their own ethical principles, grounded in universal values but independent of authority and laws. A person at this level is capable of free, critical, and responsible moral judgment that still respects the rights of others.

At which stage of moral development is our child? To which level do we want to guide them through our upbringing? And when we reflect on how we will achieve this, an unavoidable question arises: at which level are we ourselves?

Children are often our mirrors. Do we have the courage to look into them?