A Poem to Encourage Children to Be Truthful

According to a reporter from the Iran Book News Agency (IBNA), concealing honesty and telling small, childish lies in childhood can become ingrained in individuals’ personalities and lead to bigger cover-ups in later life. Usually, one of the challenges parents and teachers face with children is to avoid cheating, tricking in games, and even telling white lies; because the simple lies they tell might remain as a habit in their behavior.

How to tell children that they can speak the truth about any event without worrying about its consequences has its own unique subtleties and complexities. This is because one of the factors contributing to children’s secrecy is often the incorrect behavior of adults when learning the truth or when children’s lies are exposed.

The book ‘My Truthfulness Makes Me Stronger’ tries to teach children through a children’s poem how even small lies can lead to adults losing trust in them or separating them from their social circles. At the end of the book, the virtues of truthfulness and the downsides of lying are enumerated in the form of several children’s poems.

For example, in a part of the book, we read:

Whoever is truthful, their heart is always happy,
In any gathering, they are trusted.
Whoever is truthful, is full of a sense of pride,
Always far from anxiety and fear.

A liar will end up alone,
Even if they tell the truth, no one will believe them.
When you lie, you feel guilty,
You are not happy and joyful when you are guilty.

‘My Truthfulness Makes Me Stronger’ was written by Elizabeth Cole and translated into Persian as a children’s poem by Rudabeh Hamzei. Interested individuals can purchase it from Mehrsa Publications for 98,000 Tomans.