Dear Parents,
I would like to share my experience as a parent with you in the hope that it may help to bring an understanding of the importance of honesty and integrity in dealing with raising children.

I am now a grandparent and have five grandchildren, two teenagers, eight and seven year old boys and an eighteen-month-old little boy.
I have recently been taking a course in honesty and integrity and it became painfully clear to me that I had not been all I could be, as far as being a parent all those many years ago.

I would like to share with you an incident that has weighed heavily on me for at least thirty years.

When my daughters who were seven and nine at the time were visiting their grandparents in England we had a major problem with our cat Simon. He had developed an abscess on his back and as a result became over-run with fleas, which eventually infested the house.
This pet was a favorite of my youngest daughter and she adored him.
My husband and I had to fumigate the house and determined that we needed to get rid of the cat, because neither of us felt able to deal with the extra time, energy and money that it would take to solve the problem.
We decided that if we took him to the country he might stand a chance of surviving, subconsciously knowing that it wasn’t likely.
We drove him to a quiet spot and dropped him off. Later that day I knew that we had done wrong and have never forgiven myself for it.
This, in itself was bad enough, but then my husband and I proceeded to explain to our youngest daughter when she returned from her trip that Simon had just taken off one day and disappeared. Again we fooled ourselves into believing that we were doing it for her sake, as we didn’t want to upset her. This was another lie. We really did it because we couldn’t face her with what we had done.
Unfortunately, she believed that Simon had run away from her and in effect had abandoned her. She never forgot Simon, and she never could understand why he would run away from her.

This secret has, over the years built a wall between us that was never even apparent until recently. I failed her by first not telling her the truth, which became a loss of trust and second by not allowing her a good reason to grieve for her beloved pet.

I have learned that being a good parent includes not only providing shelter, feeding, clothing, educating and tending to scrapes and fevers, but also includes respecting children as free beings with a right to honesty and trust.
I have learned that lies sit and fester like Simon’s abscess and affect every exchange with that person from then on. I have learned that confronting each and every difficulty with truth and integrity when raising children is not only the best way, but is also affects the very foundation of your relationship with them.


One day I hope to bring this to my daughter’s attention when I will ask for her understanding and forgiveness. Meanwhile, I realize that being a parent is the most important job that you will ever do in ones lifetime and you do not get a second chance to correct your mistakes if you leave it too long. There is no early parenting training on how to do this most important job and it is the most difficult and scary role that you will ever take on. It is also the most rewarding. Please do it well, with love and honesty and hopefully you will avoid some of the mistakes that most of us unknowingly make.

G.G.