When my kids were little, I read a really excellent parenting book called The Biggest Job We’ll Ever Have by Laura and Malcolm Gauld. One of the foundational maxims of the book was “Truth Over Harmony.” You know. Don’t sweep things under the rug. Don’t ignore or recharacterize your kids’ or your own missteps or failings or failures. Don’t postpone dealing with something difficult in the hope that it will all just sort itself out. Don’t let the lure of a peaceful home drown out the nagging itch in your soul that something should be addressed.

Lotta “don’t” in there, but OK. Check. Got it.

In the twenty years or so since, I’ve had many, many occasions to wrestle with and fight for the places truth and harmony hold in my family and I’d like to share a bit of what I’ve learned. 

We All Want Families Grounded in Truth, But on the Day to Day Level, it’s Easy to Sidestep the Truth for the Sake of Harmony.

I should clarify at the outset that when I’m talking about “truth,” I’m not talking about Santa-isn’t-real-and-how-does-anyone-buy-into-a-giant-bunny-delivering-Easter-eggs-and-wait-til-I-tell-you-about-the-tooth-fairy kind of truth. Those are stories told to help kids understand truth writ large. They’re concrete stand ins for something more nuanced and complex than kids may be ready for developmentally, but ultimately speak to a larger truth. 

There is goodness in the world. 

Traditions are fun and bring us together. 

Teeth are valuable. Hold onto the next set.

Truth, as I’m using it here, is more like an orientation. It’s footed in facts, but goes significantly beyond them to include experiences and observations, values and beliefs. It’s about openness and authenticity, about integrity in creed and deed. And it applies to everyone in the family. Everyone. 

Second, you should know that I consider myself a very committed truth-teller. I grew up in a family that danced lightly with it, and that kind of swung me in the opposite direction. Yet even I have been lured by the siren song of harmony and occasionally stepped away from the truth for the sake of peace or in a misguided effort to build self-esteem or to put a swift end to a conversation which, if I had been honest, would have been way more complicated. 

Babies come from God. Like ice cream. Let’s get ice cream!

Toys-R-Us is really like a library. You can play with things here, but you can’t take them home unless you have one of those special cards everyone’s showing at the checkout. 

We can’t get donuts. The sign outside Krispy Kreme says its closed. (To which my oldest, in kindergarten at the time, said, No it doesn’t. It says “hot now.” That’s how I found out she could read. Honesty is a two way street.)

These are fairly harmless deceptions, and self-limiting. They’re not something I sweat about. Same with withholding information I consider private and refusing to engage in a conversation in which I feel I’m being manipulated. Nor would I ever advocate using “the truth” as an excuse to be mean. Honesty, done well, has a timing component. Telling your frenemy that that dress really does make her look fat when she can’t possibly change it certainly doesn’t win you any virtue points. 

But Sometimes, Without our Even Realizing it, our Mistruths or Silent Omissions Can Become Part of the Fabric of our Family.

That said, in my nearly thirty years of parenting (and nearly sixty years of living), I’ve come to the conclusion that honesty is hugely, hugely important to the long term strength and happiness of any family. In its absence, I’ve seen families quietly and unknowingly slip into unhealthy ways of relating to one another that are deeply entangled with falsehoods or unspoken truths. I’ve seen those patterns stretch into gaping emotional gulfs or deep layers of resentment between siblings or between parents and one or more of their children. Sometimes, they seem nearly impossible to bridge. Sometimes they lead to family blowups or stony silences. Sometimes worse.

I’ve given a lot of thought to how this kind of thing happens and, in my experience, families are not usually undone by some “big lie,” like, for example, forgetting to tell someone they were adopted or that Uncle Bob’s misspent youth was actually spent in the big house. In my experience, it’s usually repeated little things – attempts to avoid confrontation, misguided efforts to protect someone, hidden or ignored bits of family lore or dynamic – that worm their way into the family lexicon and cause the big problems. 

They may seem innocent enough at first, maybe even helpful. But, with repetition, they bloat and warp to the point that they can strangle the very roots of our relationships.

Your brother throws such a fit if I ask him to do anything around the house. You never mind helping. Why don’t we just clean up ourselves.

Don’t tell Dad we went shopping today. He’ll just stress about the money.

We don’t talk about Bruno. No. No. No.  

In other words, families don’t jump off the truth train; they fall off, and don’t even realize it until the train is miles away and they’re standing by a dusty, empty track with a whole lot of baggage wondering, How the heck did we get here?

If you want to avoid that unenviable little sidetrack, the first step is to commit yourself to truth speaking.

Model Honesty. Always.

You are the most powerful culture shaper in your family. You know this. If your kids hear you gush to your sister, Of course I don’t mind watching your great danes while you vacation in Hawaii, and then listen to you grumble for two weeks about how much you hate dogs and how your sister owes you big time, they’ll think, Oh. That’s how we handle difficult conversations in our family. We say things we don’t feel then stew in resentment. 

When you know in your gut that your son actually did blow off curfew last night, but you pretend not to have noticed because you’re just too exhausted to deal with it, he’ll likely have two habit-inducing insights. One, that lying is so much easier than getting lectured or punished. And, two (because he’ll probably suspect you know the truth because you pretty much always do), that his lying works for you too. Both assumptions set you up to become much more of a truth enforcer than you ever want to be. Trust me.

Also, be especially mindful about the unintended messages that can come with “self-esteem” building. Telling your daughter that she’s the smartest kid in the class or the next Alex Morgan when it’s obviously not true not only tells her that you’re comfortable bending the truth, it undermines her confidence in you and implies that not being the smartest kid in the class or the next Alex Morgan is so terrible we can’t even admit it to one another.  Lot of pressure there, and a lot of unintended messaging. Better to say you admire her tenacity (if you do) or that her pull back was a thing of beauty (if it was).

But it’s Just as Important to be a Truth Seeker as it is to be a Truth Speaker.

Building a family that’s centered around truth is about so much more than avoiding lies. It’s about creating a consistent culture not just of benevolent truth telling, but also intentional truth seeking. 

Truth seeking is a very active thing. It asks us to peek behind what we say and to regularly dig into how we interact to ensure that what we show about ourselves and know about one another is actually true. At our best, all of us are constantly changing and growing, but this is especially true of kids. It’s very easy for them to outpace us and become stuck in a family dynamic or role that no longer fits them. 

For example, I have a daughter who is a natural helper, generous with her time and talent, someone who takes joy in being of service to others. I have a son who would happily allow said daughter to indulge her altruism to the point of denying him the opportunity to develop any of his own. I’ve had to step between them many times to stop my daughter from doing something she was perfectly willing to do, but which I knew should fall to my son.

I did (and do) this because I’ve seen what happens if this dynamic is allowed to limp along uncorrected. Fifteen, twenty years down the line, the (unintended) message that has seeped into my daughter’s soul will be that she is expected to help and, into my son’s, that he is not. More is expected of one than the other, and that, my friends, is where anger and resentment flourish. 

I’ve seen this happen more often than I can say. Over time, incrementally, one child slips into the role of the “good” one, always kind, flexible, and accommodating and expected to remain so. The other is allowed to become the “bad” one, self-engaged, thoughtless, doing their own thing, and expected to be accepted as such. The relationship between the two becomes strained. Then mom and dad are floored one day when one or both kids blows up – usually at mom and dad – in a desperate effort to break out of a dynamic that they’d outgrown a long time ago.

All this can be avoided by some active truth seeking. Noticing and questioning unspoken family “rules” or dynamics. Checking in to see how people are feeling about their relationships with one another. Probing to see if any truths need to be opened up rather than passively waiting for them to explode.

Accept the Fact That Dealing in Truth is Sometimes Painful, Which is not Necessarily a Bad Thing.

Often, we avoid sharing hard truths because we really don’t want to cause any pain to the person we’re sharing with. If I tell my daughter that her history day presentation suffered seriously from her lack of practice or my son that he needs to give other people a chance to talk if he wants to make friends, that could deeply hurt their feelings. They might be upset with me. I might even (gasp!) damage their self-esteem.

I have great news on this one from the science front. Turns out, when we’re contemplating whether to offer some honest but not-so-good feedback, the vast majority of us tend to over focus on the short-term pain we might cause and under focus on the long-term benefits that knowing the truth will give to that other person. By offering our kids the hard truths they need to hear – in an age-appropriate, benevolent and tactful way – we’re actually putting their growth and future happiness above our own drive to avoid them any pain. Kids are smart. They’ll pick this up. 

Also turns out most people actually prefer to know the truth, easy, hard, whatever. Also turns out kids are people. It may take them a minute, but as long as whatever hard truth you’re sharing with them is something they can actually change or work on, they will be grateful you did. Your relationship will grow stronger because you were willing to deal with them truthfully. This is science, people.

And That Managing – Rather Than Avoiding – That Conflict Gives Your Kids Permission – and a Template – to Express Their Own Truth.

I came from a family that struggled with truth telling in large part because we had difficulty managing the conflict it sometimes caused. Faced with hard truths or feelings, my parents were advocates of the let’s-just-put-it-behind-us-and-move-on approach. 

It’s not that I’m anti the let-it-go tack. I think it’s totally appropriate for the small stuff, the kinds of tiffs bred more of a bad mood or misunderstanding than anything real. But, unless it’s truly small potatoes, the just-move-on thing skirts two huge opportunities.

First, you miss the opportunity to show your kids that you can handle difficult truth. You definitely don’t want your kids growing up thinking their family is too frail to fight. Conflict in close relationships is inevitable. If kids grow up thinking the sky will fall if everything isn’t peachy perfect they’re not likely to feel comfortable being completely truthful with you or with the rest of the family. That would be a lonely, miserable way to grow up. 

Growing up in a family that strives to be truth-centered, and actively addresses and manages whatever conflict attends that core commitment, gives kids permission and confidence to speak the truth themselves. Not just with the family. With everybody. Which, ultimately, sets them free, a connected, marvelous way to walk through life.

Second, you miss a golden chance to teach kids how to address difficult truths. Literally. What words to use in a really challenging conversation. I have a friend who starts them very deliberately. With her hand on her listener’s arm and her attention fully focused, she says, “I have something I need to discuss with you and I can only do it because I know you know it comes from love.” BAM. Defenses BLOWN. Real communication ensues.

My feeling is this: if whatever it is you’re struggling with in the family is important enough that you have to put actual effort into putting it behind you, it’s probably important enough to have an honest conversation about. Otherwise, embrace your inner Elsa and let it go.

And Truth is the Road to Harmony

The reason for that is simple. I, personally, have never seen the path to a strained or broken relationship littered with shards of truth, honesty, and authentic communication. That’s the stuff that genuine, strong, lasting connections are made of. Which leads me to quibble just a bit with the inestimable Mr. and Mrs. Gauld: truth isn’t above harmony; it’s the road to harmony.