Favreau – dishonesty between parent and child

We’ve had an unfortunate incident with the family where they told their 6 year old child that they were actually going to a birthday party and, but in reality the child was coming to the hospital to have surgery, and the parents were just so afraid of what this would do to their child, thinking about going to the hospital and having surgery, that, I don’t know, they just missed the whole point of what having a trusting relationship with your child is. The child arrived at the hospital and it was chaos for this child and the family. The child was not cooperating, was crying, was, you know, just so traumatized because when you mention the word birthday party, every child has a vision of cake and fun and balloons and happiness and no worries, and this was not the case of course. So the surgeon who was to do the surgery was, of course, absolutely furious and cancelled the surgery because there was no way that this could happen. They could not be a part of the parents’ misconceived ideas of how they would address this issue with the child just because of the trust. I think the parents were spoken to and did then realize how wrong that was, and just that their child would never trust them again if this were to be the case. So it really is very important to be honest with your children to respect that they can handle so much more than we give them credit for, especially if it’s the truth.