I decided an old school lesson was in store for everyone. All twelve kids gathered in our front living room while I prepared a shallow bowl of water. Zeek, being our oldest and our "role model", started off the lesson by taking a silver nickle. All the other children got a penny.
I explained to them that Zeek's silver nickle represented a lie. I told Zeek to stand over the shallow bowl of water and drop his nickle in. After the nickle fell, I had each child take their turn to try and cover up the silver nickle by dropping their penny in. After eleven attempts (daddy attempted it for Charleigh) the nickle was still visible. I let my kids all have another turn of dropping another penny into the shallow bowl in hopes of covering the shiny nickle. No one managed to cover the nickle completely, though Peighton got pretty close.
I explained to them that every penny in the bowl represented a lie used to cover up the original, silver lie. So far, we had 22 pennies in the bowl and the original lie was still visible. When we tell a lie, we spend so much time and effort trying to cover that lie up by telling several small lies. In the end, the original lie was still visible for everyone to see.
It was a fun activity but by the end of our lesson everyone had a better understanding of why it's important to just tell the truth the first time. The very next day, Paisley was caught with her tablet in her bed. She is currently grounded from electronics due to watching something inappropriate. When I approached her about the situation, she immediately told me she wanted to tell the truth regardless of the consequence.
That's progress.
I like progress.
I am attaching a worksheet that I've been using for all my children when they get caught for making a poor choice.
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