Lying 2

“How could you lie to me?” Have you ever had someone ask you this question? People always say that so dramatically. They might as well say, “How could you have ruined my life? How could you be so cruel?” Nothing could be worse unless you ran over their dog,  took away their favorite teddy bear, or ate the last piece of pecan pie.

When you hear someone say that, they are saying, “How could you have done this to ME?” In this scenario, who’s the most important person? Me! Me! Me! Me! Me!

If you knew all about Real Love and understood why people do the things they do, you might answer, “Because when I don’t hide my mistakes, you’re angry and unloving, and then I feel terrible. I feel unloved and alone. I’d rather lie then feel those feelings.”

I have loved you conditionally many times in the past. When you made mistakes and didn’t do what I expected, I was disappointed and angry. You then felt like I didn’t love you unconditionally, and you were right. You are afraid that I’ll take my love and affection away from you if I see who you really are—with all your mistakes and flaws. This is understandable, because I have done that. When you lied, I have expressed my anger and disappointment less. In a way, I have helped to teach you how to lie.

I have also taught you to lie by my own example. How did I do that?

Here are some examples of my lies:

• The traffic was bad. (I could have left earlier but I wanted to watch TV while eating my donut)
• I didn’t have time. (I chose to snooze my alarm for 20 extra minutes)
• It was Jacob and David’s fault. (Saying I was late because the kids dawdled instead of taking responsibility for not giving myself and the kids more time)
• You make me so mad. (Other people never make us angry. We choose to be angry)

Most people lie many times a day, often without realizing they are doing it. Kids learn a lot by watching their parents and doing what they do.

When was the last time you lied?

What was it about?

How did it make you feel?
 

Lying 

It seems like a good thing to lie, doesn’t it? When you make a mistake and you lie about it, no one gets mad, no one is disappointed, there are no sighs, and nobody thinks you’re “bad.”   

Imagine you’re playing baseball in the front yard. You are the pitcher, and the bases are loaded with your friends. You get so nervous that you throw a wild pitch and it goes right through the dining room window. OMG. 

I come running out of the house yelling, “What happened? What were you thinking?” I’m not a little bit mad, I’m furious! Steam is coming out of my ears and my face is bright red. I start waving my arms around and pointing to the window and you. I yell at you about being irresponsible and careless. By now, you’re not hearing a word I’ve said. You’re looking for a way to escape, not to mention you’re totally embarrassed in front of your friends because your mom has officially lost her mind. 

Because I am angry it’s obvious that I’m only thinking about myself. I am being totally selfish. Responsibility and being careful fly right out the window. All you can really hear me say is, “That window is WAAAAAYYYYY more important than you are.” The moment you sense my disappointment and anger, you can only feel unloved and alone. When you feel unloved and alone, it’s impossible to hear a lesson on responsibility. 

A few days later, you are playing with a super ball in the living room and break a lamp. You know that if I find out, I am going to be really angry. Luckily, you remember that your older brother avoided getting in trouble one time by saying, “I don’t know. It wasn’t me.” When I walk into the living room and start demanding to know who did it, you calmly say, "I don't know Mom. It wasn't me." After I stomp off you think, "Wow. Cool. That worked great." Why wouldn't you try it again? You saved yourself a consequence, some yelling, and you weren't made to feel guilty or bad.

Under these circumstances, how did you learn how to lie? From the people around you--lying itself from your brother and the motivation to lie from me. What is motivation? It's something that makes you want to take action. My anger and disappointment motivated you to lie.

So what's wrong with lying if it helps you to avoid pain? Telling the truth about ourselves is the only way to feel loved and accepted with all of our warts, mistakes and flaws. When we lie we make it impossible for ourselves to feel accepted and loved. It just doesn't work. More about lying next time.

Real Love in Parenting, Greg Baer MD, pages 39-40
 

Have you ever played a team sport like baseball or soccer? If so, you know that the team works together to win—or lose—the game. Each player’s performance affects the other members. So what happens when one team member is having a tough day on the field? Maybe your friend strikes out at the plate, misses the goal or drops a pass. Have you ever said, “Shoot! Why didn’t you catch the ball?” or “Geez, Ryan. You made us lose the game!”

When you say these things, you’re showing that you’re what?

Disappointed. Disappointment is like anger. When we’re disappointed, we’re always wrong. Why? Because when we’re disappointed we’re only thinking about ourselves, not the other person’s happiness. When we think about another person’s happiness, we are being loving. Being loving is always right. Doing things that are not loving is always wrong.

 At the baseball game, for example, if you were concerned for the happiness of your friend who struck out, you might say, “That’s all right. Keep trying. Everybody strikes out sometimes.” When you’re disappointed, you’re only thinking about what happens to YOU because your friend struck out. You’re only worried about how you might not get to bat again, how your team is going to lose and your Dad is going to be upset, or how you’re not going to get to go to the playoffs.

Every time we are disappointed in someone, we are saying that the most important person is, “Me! Me! Me! Me! Me!” We are also saying, “I don’t care about you” or “I don’t love you.” It’s pretty hard to make and keep friends when we tell them we don’t care about them.

You can handle disappointment in the same way you handle being angry. The first thing to do is: BE QUIET. When we are quiet, we can realize that the way we are reacting is wrong. So, the second step is: BE WRONG. We only get disappointed when we don’t feel loved and happy. So, the third step is: FEEL LOVED, remember you are loved, or GET LOVED. Sometimes we can think about the times when we felt especially loved, and it helps us to remember there are people in our life who love and care about us.

When we feel too bad to remember we are loved, it helps to GET LOVED. How can we do that? Tell the truth about how you are disappointed to a wise person who can listen to you. Once you FEEL LOVED, you can BE LOVING. Love your friend who dropped the ball. Tell him it’s okay. Tell him you think he’s cool anyway. Encourage him. When you can love someone else, you will always feel happy. This is the circle of love. It makes life fun and wonderful!

When you whine, cry, throw a fit, are irritable, cranky, disobedient, rebellious and angry, you don’t feel loved. It’s so simple. It’s NOT because you didn’t get what you wanted. Getting SOME THING or getting to do something you want to do is not the same as feeling loved. When you lie down on the floor at the Blockbuster checkout line and scream, “I want my baby bottle pop!” over and over again, if I give it to you, I am NOT loving you. I am just doing something to shut you up so that you don’t embarrass me any more. You are being inconvenient to me, and I want you to stop.

What would be loving? Quietly picking you up and saying, “Sweetheart, when I planned this errand, I didn't think about how tired you might be by now. I did not consider you at all--I only thought about myself and the things I thought I needed to do. I was wrong. I would like for you to feel loved by me, so let's go home and spend some time together playing a game and winding down, and then I’ll lie down with you for a quick nap.”

Wouldn't it be nice to know that you don’t have to behave badly to get me to love you? You would only be getting Imitation Love. We talked about Imitation Love before. It's a distraction. A distraction is something that takes your attention away from what is happening at the moment. Imitation Love distracts you from the pain of feeling unloved. It’s the kind of love you have to pay for by doing something, like being quieter, obeying, smiling, doing well in school—being “good.” The feeling from Imitation Love doesn’t last. It goes away quickly.  You feel like you have to earn more of it.

There are four different kinds of Imitation Love: Praise, Power, Pleasure, and Safety. In the next few sessions, we’ll talk more about each kind of Imitation Love. As you see and understand more about imitation Love, you will understand why unconditional love, Real Love, is so much better.

Parents: We so often make the mistake of expecting our children to be different than they are. We live our lives full to the brim and wonder why the child is cranky, rebellious and miserable when we run errands at 4pm in the afternoon. We can instead tell the truth about how we were unloving to the child. We can tell the truth about how we did not consider how our plans might affect them. Telling the truth about this mistake, even to your children, is a great first step toward loving them.

Later, when they are feeling more loved and happy you can tell another truth to the child and teach them in the process:  "In the past, there have been many times when you threw a fit because you wanted something and I gave in so you would be quiet. I want you to know that getting SOME THING or getting to do some thing, is not the same as feeling loved by me. Do you remember how you threw that fit at Blockbuster today? Do you remember it wasn't really about the baby bottle pop at all? You really needed a nap, and you needed to be loved by me. Once you felt rested, loved and happy, you forgot all about the baby bottle pop. Do you see how that works?"

Throughout the habitat various fruits were scattered to provide food for the butterflies, and it was fascinating to watch the winged creatures alight to extend their delicate feeding tubes to nourish themselves. The butterflies also landed on every other surface throughout the building, including the clothing and skin of the people walking about. The patrons were all carefully instructed not to touch the butterflies, because their wings were quite delicate and easily damaged. Nonetheless, when a butterfly landed on our arm or shirt, it was so tempting to reach out and touch it, an almost irresistible belief that touching would result in an even closer connection to the wonder and beauty of this living thing. But we knew that if we gave in to this temptation and touched the insect's wing, the surface of the wing would very likely be damaged, which would make flight, feeding, and life impossible for the butterfly. In short, any attempt on our part to manipulate or control the beauty we were observing would result in its destruction.

A similar process occurs if we attempt to control unconditional love. The moment we reach out to manipulate the attention, respect, gratitude, cooperation, or affection of another person-the moment we attempt to get love from anyone-we destroy the possibility that what we will feel as though it were given unconditionally. We can feel Real Love only if we don't grab it, manipulate it, or control it. Love is real only when it's freely given and freely received.

On one occasion while I was at the Butterfly Center, when I was standing quite still, a gorgeous, cerulean blue butterfly descended from the sky and alighted on my shoulder. After noticing this unexpected event out of the corner of my eye, I slowly turned my head and enjoyed this amazing sight for some time before the creature sprang again into the air. I was grateful for this precious moment and grateful that I had done nothing to interfere with the butterfly's actions in any way. Had I done anything to control the experience, I would have greatly diminished-or perhaps entirely ruined-the joy of it.

And so it has been with my experiences with Real Love. I'm grateful when people love me unconditionally, but I have learned that I cannot control such experiences. If I try to manipulate people to love me-if I try to get their attention, respect, or affection in any way-I ruin any possibility of feeling genuinely loved. If, on the other hand, I do nothing to manipulate people, if I am just myself-standing quite still, as it were, allowing the butterflies to land on me as they choose-unconditionally loving experiences will come to me, and the feelings are quite miraculous.

Only Dogs Go in the Doghouse

For Christmas, my kids gave me a present that they made with their grandparents, my former in-laws. They spent a lot of time making it, painting it and gluing it together. It was a wooden picture with a chain screwed into the top. My youngest son was very proud of the fact that he helped screw in the chain. The picture had three small wooden dogs on the right side and our last name printed on it. Each dog was labeled with a dog collar and had a spot on the board where the dogs could stick with Velcro. There were three dogs: Mom (me), and my two kids. On the left side was a picture of a doghouse that was empty except for a piece of Velcro to stick a dog on. Above it were the words, “In the doghouse.”

I spent some time tonight talking with the kids about what it means to be in the doghouse. My young guy said, “It’s when you’re bad.” I talked with them about what it means to be “bad.” D. listed the things he does when he’s “bad”: crying, whining, punching, begging, etc.

“Why do we do these things when we’re being ‘bad’?” I asked them. We do these things because we’re empty and afraid. We do them because we need to be loved. People aren’t “bad”—they just use their getting and protecting behaviors (lying, clinging, attacking, acting like a victim and running) when they’re feeling unloved. “Bad” means that there’s something wrong with you. It means that you’re unlovable.

“So what if I put this up in the hall and D., when you’re in trouble, everyone can see that you’ve been “bad.” How would you feel?” I asked.

“Unloved!” Right on!

“And J., if I put this in the hall and put you in the dog house and all day long D. said to you, “J.’s in the dog house! J’s in the dog house!” how would you feel?

“I would think it was annoying.” Right!

Nobody feels loved in the dog house! Why? Because usually when we’re in the dog house, somebody is mad, angry, irritated or disappointed in us. When we are in the dog house, people stop loving us, and they are telling us that we are unlovable. Are we unlovable? Never. You are never unlovable, even if you do things that are annoying, selfish, mean and irritating. Even when you are not convenient and even when you are difficult, even when you’re messy and you smell bad, you’re still lovable.

Who belongs in the dog house? We have a black mutt named Bones. In our family, she’s the only one who belongs in the dog house. And when she goes into the dog house, we’re never mad at her, she’s not in trouble, and she’s never bad. People don’t go in the dog house, dogs do.

What is Imitation?

Have you ever made a cake and the recipe asked for vanilla? Vanilla extract is made from the vanilla plant which grows native to Mexico. Vanilla extract is what makes vanilla ice cream so yummy. It’s also the second most expensive spice after saffron, because it costs a lot to grow the seed pods used to make it. A small bottle of real vanilla extract can cost almost $10.

Because real vanilla is so expensive, companies make imitation vanilla from a chemical called phenol. What does “imitation” mean? It means “fake” or not real. When something is an imitation, it means it may look or taste similar to the original or real thing, but it’s not exactly the same. Usually it means that it’s not quite as good as the real thing.

There’s lots of Imitations in the world—Imitation vanilla, imitation chicken and beef made from soy, imitation crab made from other fish, imitation perfumes and imitation jewelry that’s made of imitation gold.

Things that are imitation are less valuable than the real thing and are used as a substitute for the real thing.

In the same way, there’s Imitation Love and there’s Real Love.

What is Imitation Love?  When kids don’t have unconditional love in their lives, they feel empty. Imagine an empty hole in your heart that needs to be filled up. Kids use many things to fill up this empty hole—anger, whining, disobeying, fighting, pouting, rebelling, being stubborn or difficult, not listening, being selfish, hiding, running away, “tuning out” and being spacy. When kids get older, they use drugs and alcohol or the approval of their “friends.” 

You guys have used some of these behaviors, too. You believe that when you do these things, you will get or feel “loved.” In the past, I have "traded" with you and given you Imitation Love as a response to these behaviors. I am learning to do that differently. I am learning to give you Real Love, not Imitation.

What I gave you in the past when you did these things was an IMITATION of feeling loved. The feeling doesn’t last and only temporarily relieves the pain of not being loved. As Greg says, Imitation Love provides a “pale imitation of the genuine happiness that can be produced only by Real Love.” Imitation Love is used as a substitute for Real Love, but like Imitation Vanilla, it’s nowhere near as valuable or as good.

So what are the different forms of Imitation Love?

Praise, Power, Pleasure, and Safety.  We’ll be talking about each one of these Imitations in the next few days.

The Three Jobs of Mom and Dad

What is Mom’s job? To make dinner and keep the house clean? To pick you up from the bus stop and make sure you have a good snack? To snuggle you and read to you at bedtime?

How about Dad? What is his job? Is it to practice baseball with you? To play rough with you and toss you around? To watch “guy” movies on TV with you? To take you out to IHOP for breakfast?

Mom and Dad have three jobs when it comes to our kids:

• Love our children
• Teach them how to love other people
• Teach them responsibility

Simple, huh? We are responsible for loving you and teaching you what’s right so that you can choose to be loving and happy instead of empty and miserable.

What does right and happy mean?

The entire goal of life is to be happy. Being happy is a sense of peace and joy that stays with us no matter what our circumstances are. We can be in terrible circumstances—ill, no place to live, clothes that don’t keep us warm, separated from people who love us—and we can still be happy. Real happiness comes from feeling loved and loving other people. That feeling stays with us even if life is hard. It does not come from being entertained or getting other people to do what we want them to do.

Because happiness is the main goal of life, a behavior is right when it leads us to feeling happy. In other words, anything that leads to being unconditionally loved, loving and responsible, is right. Anything that keeps us from being unconditionally loved, loving and responsible is wrong. That’s why anger is wrong—it doesn’t lead to anyone being happy. That is why I sometimes tell you to stop playing video games. If you’re playing and you’re irritated, yelling at your friends, and unhappy, it’s wrong for you to play video games at that time. This doesn’t mean you can’t play video games forever, only until you feel more loved and happy.

In the next few days, we’re going to begin talking about Imitation Love. This will begin to help you see when you’re doing things that are wrong—the things that don’t lead to happiness!

Reference Real Love in Parenting, Greg Baer, MD, pp. 25-26