Dishonest Children

This month I have been working especially hard on a book with a cowriter named Pat Miller. We have known each other for years in the parenting training and foster parenting circles. We have been working on this book for almost three years now. [Why so long? Did I mention she lives in Texas and I live in Maine?] I think we are just about ready to start shopping it around to publishers. The book is tentatively titled The Dishonest Child: A Practical Plan to Reduce Lying and Stealing. Lots of books address problem behaviors and usually include a section on lying and/or stealing. They seldom go beyond motives and often simplistic advice to reduce the behavior. We start with the motives and move through specific, detailed steps for helping children who are chronically dishonest.

Parents almost universally list honesty as one of the keys traits they hope to instill in their children yet research shows that lying and stealing are common to a huge percentage of children. We have filled our book with examples from real life families: foster, bio, adoptive, and step. We have long since given up on using current examples of celebrities caught in lying or stealing because the list seems to change every news cycle.

I think I will start to include [every once in a while] snippets from the book in this blog. It seems silly to cover other problems and ignore the one I am writing a book about. But... I would also like to extend a cyber-invitation to my blog readers. If any of you are struggling with this in your homes or just interested in this issue and would be willing to be a reader for our manuscript, please let me know. You would have the fun of reading a work in progress and perhaps giving feedback that would make it better or a comment/response that could be used in promoting the book to potential publishers. In any case, the invitation is there if anyone is interested, let me know...