It’s inevitable, all parents will run into this at some point, today was just my day. The day you catch your kids lying, deliberately, at an age old enough to know both the difference between truth and lie, and old enough to know better.

In fact, actually both yesterday and today were those days. Yesterday I tried ranting that honesty was a requirement in our household, that I had to 100% trust that everything that they did and said was the truth, and that the consequences would escalate until she learned the error of her ways.

So of course I caught her doing the same dishonest thing again today. *bang head on wall* <- mine, not hers, if you were at all wondering

When I’m teaching on the river, I don’t tend to need to start with “why”, the river has usually made that fairly apparent. I don’t want to have to bail out of my kayak when I flip upside-down, I want to learn to roll, because… I don’t want to swim, having a “yard sale” with my gear running away from me in every direction down the rapids, getting banged up for being in the river instead of on top of it. I don’t want to miss my must-make power ferry, because… I don’t want to go over that next drop, it’s a scary one! I want to wear weather-appropriate garb on the river because… I don’t want to have to be carried away from the river mid-day by my friends when I’m suffering heat exhaustion or hypothermia.

In medical research, we start with a why of taking care of people and patients. We develop hypotheses and experiments, write protocols, recruit patients, collect data, analyze and write about the data, for the “why” of improving care of our fellow humans. We don’t do it to get a first author publication, because we want to go to that conference in that neat vacation destination, to pursue that next promotion or to get that first post-residency job. And therefore we honor the scientific integrity of the research process above all else.

And I’d forgotten this start with why requirement is an imperative in parenting too.

So today we got to re-teach the honesty lesson for the kiddo. We tag-teamed it. Me on the implications if we can’t trust family members implicitly, with kid-appropriate examples of various breaches of trust each member of our family could make, and what the consequences of those would be. (Okay, I admit it, first I started in again with the “You can’t do that, there will be escalating consequences!” part of the lesson. Which isn’t really a “why”, that’s a “why not to get caught”.) And my husband a couple hours later, on what the implications of her particular dishonesty could mean to her and the family – which since it was a hygiene issue seems like his explanation may be especially impactful given we’ve been talking about COVID-19 and infections and disease for the past 4+ months.

Whether starting with why works with the kiddo… well, it worked on the first one, several years ago, a couple of days of being confronted with “why” and I don’t believe they’ve lied to me since. Including when they’ve gotten in trouble out of parental sight, they’ve run towards us instead of away.

Starting with why is imperative in parenting, in kayaking, and in research. Turns out it’s also vital for your finances. And maybe until now, you’ve only been getting the “there will be consequences!” part of the lesson so far too.

Instead, it’s time to re-frame. What’s your financial why? You’ll only value your money, stick with your plan, and make progress on your goals when you actually know and value your why.