Shedding Light on Dishonesty
It happened again this week. A former student told me something to make me believe something that wasn’t entirely true. He wanted me to believe the information the way I heard it. However, he left out some details so I wouldn’t know what really happened. The crazy thing is there was no reason for him to lie… which is what he did by leading me to believe something that wasn’t true by the way he presented the information.
All of this happened by text message this week. Tonight when I brought it to his attention by text message, there was no response. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. I’d rather him think about being found out for a while instead of him trying to worm his way out of being caught.
The point of sharing this is to encourage other youth workers to share the one line every youth worker needs to use in this specific situation. When students try to wiggle their way out by saying they didn’t lie, you just didn’t ask the right questions… yada, yada, this one question will fillet them open exposing their lie in a way they can’t deny.
And the question is… drum roll please… “What did you want me to believe when you said (quote back what they said) to me?”
Therein lies the lie.
Students lack integrity because they’re in a no-fault, value-trampling society. A great part of being a youth worker is instilling those values into them. It’s not an easy task because the world has them for most of their lives. We only have them for an hour or two each week.
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Filed under: For your newsletter, mentoring
Great article Dennis! Thanks for posting.