Modeling Honesty

Modeling Honesty

Here at True Balance Karate in Downers Grove, Illinois, we have a social emotional learning program called True Character. I’m Master H, the owner and chief instructor here at the studio. I have two master’s degrees in education, and we’ve designed this program to meet the needs of our youngest students who are three or four, and our oldest student who is 85.

Recap

And this month we’ve been talking about honesty, being truthful, being trustworthy, being fair. How does that look? What does that sound like?

You know, earlier when we talked about being truthful, and how some young kids, it might be their gut reaction to immediately deny being the person to break the glass or, cheat on a game or something like that.

And we need to make sure that we’re giving them tools and strategies to be able to undo that lie so that they can understand that being honest is better. For my kids, the consequences when you lied were always way worse than the consequences if you had just owned up to your mistake. Giving them the tools to be able to say, rewind, pause, let me do that over again. And then they would fix whatever it is that they were lying about, and then we would just move on from there.

Then lastly, we talked about how when you’re trustworthy, your actions are lining up with your words, right? People can count on you, you know that you’re going to keep your promises, you know that you’re going to follow through with what you say because your actions follow up with what you’ve said.

Then we talked too about how sometimes you have to break someone’s trust. Sometimes you do not have to keep their secret because it might not be safe, it might be dangerous, it might be scary. It might be something that makes you uncomfortable, that you’re like, this isn’t right. And at that point, now you’re being honest in terms of being helpful to your friend and being honest with yourself about what is good for you at the same time.

Live by Example

And today, you know, to wrap up the month, I just wanted to talk more about how we model honesty for kids, how we model honesty for each other, how we model honesty for people that might be older than us as well, right? Because when it comes down to it, it, it’s kind of like kindness where you sprinkle kindness everywhere. You want to make sure that you’re honest everywhere, and you want to make sure you’re honest in the right way.

What do I mean by that? I was reminded as I was thinking about this topic of a time when my son, who was three, received a Christmas present that he had already gotten the day before.  One grandparent gave it to him the day before the other grandparent gave him that same present. And he opened it up and he looked at it and he threw it to the ground. And he goes, “I already got this.” Well, you would say, “Hey, master H. That was entirely honest.” Yes, yes, it was. However, if we’re also talking about making sure that we are being honest and truthful and trustworthy and fair, we want to also make sure that we’re reading the situation correctly.

That might be a moment where being honest was going to be hurtful to the person. Now, thank goodness his grandparent thought it was entirely hysterical that he pitched a fit that way. And it gave us a good moment to sit down and say, “Hey, here’s how this is going to go. When you receive something that you might not like or you might already have, you’re going to look at them and you’re going to say, thank you so much because they were thinking of you and they love you, and they wanted to do something nice for you. And then we’re going to return it, re-gift it, reuse it, figure out what we’re going to do about it. But what we’re not going to do is pitch a fit. We’re not going to hurt their feelings that way.” And he says, “But that’s not being honest.” I told him I understood.

Quiet vs Loud Honesty

However, sometimes we are being honest if we’re just going to be totally quiet. And this is a quiet time, we want to make sure that we are honest and loud when it’s not safe, dangerous, we’re unsure, we’re scared. But you know, if it’s a gift, or if it’s, “do you like my new haircut?” If it’s, “what do you think of this awesome shirt that I just got”, then it’s time for quiet. “Awesome, love it. I think it looks great. It’s not my taste, but it looks great on you.” Something that way, right?

But now if we’re at the park and somebody’s making us feel a little bit, unsafe, or they’re staring at us a whole bunch or whatnot, then feel free to call attention to that and be entirely honest about the situation and what’s going on.

Conversations on Honesty

Because we want to teach our children how to be kind, respectful, understanding, honest, safe, confident, aware in all of those things. And in order to do that, we have to have, forgive the pun, honest conversations about honesty.

I hope you’ve enjoyed our talk about honesty. I will see you on the mat!

True Balance Karate was founded in 2012 by Master Sue and Paul Helsdon.

We offer kids karate lessons for pre-school children ages 3-6 and elementary age kids ages 7 and up. These lessons are designed to develop the critical building blocks kids need — specialized for their age group — for school excellence and later success in life.

Our adult martial arts training is a complete adult fitness and conditioning program for adults who want to lose weight, get (and stay) in shape, or learn self-defense in a supportive environment.

Instructors can answer questions or be contacted 24 hours of the day, 7 days a week at 630-663-2000. You can also contact us here. True Balance Karate is at 406 Ogden Ave Downers Grove Illinois, 60515 (next to CVS) Check out our Facebook!