Advice
Kim Answers Questions About Life, Love, People and Problems.
Kim is a qualified, registered, practising psychologist who gives people answers to questions about their problems free of charge on Words By Kim.
Below are requests for help Kim has received from, and the answers she has given to, people who agreed to have their requests published on this site. Kim has had many other requests for help from people who did not want their issues to be made public and Kim has honoured those wishes.
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wrote on June 27, 2007
at
1:35 pm
I see you are just ten years old and trying to find a way to get people to listen to you and believe you when you say you didn't do something.
One of three things is happening here.
1. You have been caught lying in the past and people don't trust you.
The problem here is that everyone tries lying when they are little. It is a natural part of the gradual climb from child to adult so people expect kids to try lying and all kids do get caught out lying at least once sooner or later.
If you have already been caught in a lie it makes it hard for people to take your word over someone elses. Catching you in a lie, even a little lie, leaves the adults around you with doubts about how honest you are until you show, over time, that you have grown out of that stage of development.
The fastest way to convince adults you have grown out of that stage of development is to be honest even when you know you will be punished. The more you own up to things you have done wrong the more the adults around you will come to believe you are an honest person. The more lies they catch you telling the less they will believe you even when you are telling the truth.
(For any adults reading this the best way to discourage lying is to reward honesty!)
2. You have not been caught lying but the people who are accusing you have not been caught lying either and they are older than you or there is more than one of them so they are considered more likely to be telling the truth.
If a child says they didn't do something and adults, or several other people, say they did do it people are inclined to believe the child is lying because everyone knows it is part of growing up for children to try lying. Until a child has proven honest over time people will tend to favour the word of adults, or several other kids, over theirs.
You will notice people are more inclined to believe you than someone who is younger than you too so hang in there. The older you get, provided you don't get caught lying, the more you will be believed.
3. You are being abused and the abuser is looking for an excuse, or is making up excuses, to justify hurting you.
Sometimes people don't really care if you are telling the truth or not. They just want someone to yell at or hit. Everyone knows yelling and hitting kids for no reason is wrong so these people grab hold of anything they can find to use as an excuse and they don't care if it is true or not. In some cases they will invent reasons if there are no real ones available.
If you are being hurt you need to tell someone you can trust so they can help you. A school counsellor, a doctor, a teacher, or any trustworthy adult can decide if you are being abused. If you are being abused they can tell someone who can do something to stop it from happening.
I hope things change for the better soon!
I'm sorry I don't have any way to fix things straight away so people will believe you now but trust is hard to get and easy to lose and, if it is abuse, making them believe you won't stop them anyway.
I hope this helps. Take care - Kim
