Honesty

We had a little incident at school. The teacher pulled me aside to say that my daughter had stolen drunk another kids juice box. Daughter said she thought it was hers. Teacher asked do you usually have a juice box? Daughter in her naivety says No. Teacher knows kid was lying.


So of course anytime a challenge comes up you do a FHE lesson on it right? After my husband suggested it, I initially balked because I remember an adult telling me once how much she disliked FHE growing up because all the lesson would ever be about is something her or one of her siblings did wrong that week and pointed out to them.

Hopefully we left a big enough gap between incident and lesson, but we did get the guilty child to TEACH the lesson!


Lesson: Honesty

Song: I believe in being Honest #149

Article of Faith: #13.
We focused on the first line... we believe in being honest, true...

What is honesty? What is true? Start discussion.


Object lesson:

I got our 6 year old made a little village out of lego.
We had the green mat, some houses, some lego friends girls, a lego tree.

In her words she told the story of 'The Boy who cried Wolf' -
{I went through the story with her previously in the afternoon}

She had a lego girl go off to the hills and sat under a tree and called to the villagers
'A wolf A wolf '
When the villagers came there was no wolf
{other lego people come and check it out}

The next day the girl went back up to the hill and called out 'a wolf a wolf'
The villagers came again and once again there was no wolf

Later the girl was back out up the hill under the tree when a REAL wolf {lego dog} came along. The girl called out but the villagers did not come because they did not believe the little girl was telling the TRUTH!

The girl was gobbled up by the wolf {tiny lego dog eats girl}


Why is it important to tell the truth?

Sometimes you might tell a lie and not get caught. You might think you go away with it.

BUT eventually you will get caught in your lies and it could:

make you lose friends/family
people will not trust you
might be dangerous (like the wolf)
you will have to tell more lies and it will hurt your spirit

We talked about how sometimes we are frightened to tell the truth so we might lie because we feel we have no other alternative
{dont want to get in trouble with a teacher, if something is broken}

But taking the consequenences is ALWAYS the better way.

If you lie and get found out the teacher/friend/parent learns not to trust you

If you tell the truth the consequence might be hard but that person knows they can trust you to do what is right and tell the truth and you will be better for it.


Establish some positives about Truths

We love it when people in our family are honest
Your parents will always love you even when you make a mistake
honest people make nice friends. Tricky people you should beware of



Closing Song: The Thirteenth Article of Faith #132

Closing Prayer: Child

Treat:

Idea 1:
You can't unbake a cake
Ask children is it possible to Un-bake a cake
{like put it back in a low temperature and reverse the process}
discuss how once a cake is made it is pretty impossible to change.

As with lying or being dishost it is sometimes very hard to undo.

Idea 2:
Using small candies hide them around the house and have children ask questions to where the candies might be hidden in which you TELL THE TRUTH to the questions they ask to help them find the candy. Telling the truth is useful and helps us find our way when people help us.