Children also must know that they are a part of the family and as a result, through those connections to their families and communities, they'll feel a responsibility to do the right thing. The teacher has a responsibility to help the children learn problem solving, and to learn why the child was struck by his playmate. There's no blaming, just an opportunity to open the situation for discussion, diffuse potentially disruptive behavior and get to the crux of truth telling. He said children engage in storytelling in an effort to give order to a chaotic world, and that storytelling may be misinterpreted by adults as being dishonest. If we describe lies in terms of a person's willful intent to deceive someone, we're not talking about these situations in which children engage in imaginative play.
Children are quick to see through pretentious adult behavior.
Often, it's the child who calls the adult to honesty, more than the adult calling the child to honesty. He says that the conventional wisdom among communication researchers is that almost everybody admits to some form of deception, but we tend to differ on what type of lying is acceptable. No one will get hurt. Or, people might justify that they can't hurt someone's feelings. To not tell the truth is to give disrespect, it's giving of love that's disingenuous.