The Massachusetts Spy, And Worcester County Advertiser

PARENTAL LIES.

We believe that the slight regard in which truth is held among mankind, is principally owing to the lies which are told to children by their parents during the first few years of their lives. Then is the time that permanent impressions may be as well made as at any later period. It is then, probably that what is called the natural propensity of a child is unfolded.

Many persons who have an abhorrence of lying, whip their children if they detect them in it, yet make no scruple of telling and acting to them the most atrocious falsehoods. There are few parents who do not do this in a greater or less degree, though doubtless without dreaming that they are guilty of criminal deception.

With many the whole business of managing their children is a piece of mere artifice and trick. They are cheated in their amusements cheated in their food, cheated in their dress. Lies are told them to do any thing that is disagreeable. If a child is to take physic, the mother tells him she has something good for him to drink : if reluctant she says she will send for a doctor to cut off his ears, or pull his teeth, or that she will go away and leave him, and a thousand things of the same kind, each of which may deceive once and answer the present purpose, but will invariably fail afterwards.

Parents are too apt to endeavor to pacify their children by making promises which they never intend to perform. If they wish, for instance, to take away some eatable which they fear will be injurious, they reconcile them by the promise of a ride, or a walk, or something else which will please them, but without any intention of gratifying them. This is lying, downright lying.

People think nothing of breaking their promises to children, if the performance of it be not perfectly convenient. But they are the last persons to whom promises should be broken, because they cannot comprehend the reason, if there be one, why they are not kept. Such promises should be scrupulously redeemed, though at a great inconvenience, and even when inadvertently made. For the child's moral habits is of infinitely more consequence than any such inconvenience can be to the parent.