Refresher: My Daughter Lied to Get a Classmate in Trouble
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Time now for a refresher from my Dr. Laura Call of the Day archives. And remember, you too can participate on my live radio program, Heard Weekdays, from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern Time on Sirius XM Triumph 111.

Vaughn, welcome to the program. Hello, Dr. Laura. How are you today? Good. What's up? Good. Yes, ma'am. I am calling you because, as you said, I need clarity and I want to do the right thing. So I have a situation. I have a situation or my wife and I have a situation with our daughter. She's 11 years old and in fifth grade.

And last Friday, she was caught in, well, being caught may not be the right term. She had told a lie on another one of her students and said that he had

It hit her in the leg and it put a bruise on the bottom of her leg. And her teacher kind of went in a panic and took pictures of the bruise and sent the pictures to the assistant principal. And they were going to begin the investigation and go back and look at the cameras and come to find out that the boy had not did that to her at all. And when they started, how did she get the how did she get the bruise?

Her sport is baton. She's a baton twirler, and she got the bruise from the baton. It's a very unforgiving sport. I know. I tried baton for a while. I kept hitting myself in the head. So, you know, I understand that. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Now, is she prone to lying or being dramatic or doing stuff to get attention or getting out of trouble? So this is an unusual thing.

Absolutely quite unusual. And like I said, I don't maybe it was some sort of some sort of divine intervention to make her tell the truth because she kept saying, don't call my dad, don't call my dad, but it's all right to tell the principal, which don't call my dad was the red flag with the teacher because she said,

She's an otherwise very respectful child. She's a yes ma'am, no ma'am, yes sir, no sir. - Okay, let me ask you a few questions, a few questions. - Yes ma'am. - Two in no important order. They're both important to me. Has she had any trouble with this boy? Does she quote, like him and he likes some other girl? I'm just looking for first, I have other ideas, first for a motivation

why she would want to get him in trouble. Yes, ma'am. You're right on target. She has had ongoing issues with this little boy. He talks very ugly to her. He has some issues in class. He's very disruptive. He gets put out a lot, and he has used ugly words at her, and I think that

sometimes like he may brush by her and then she will immediately like, you know, yell out, stop. And that causes, you know, that makes the teacher look and what's going on. So yes, there's been some ongoing issues between her and him as well as him and all the students in the class. Introducing Instagram teen accounts.

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Okay. Let me ask another question, then I'll come back to that. All right. You're doing great so far. Give you an A plus. All right. Here we go. Yes, ma'am. I'm with you. Is there any reason you could think of she'd be embarrassed that she goofed with the baton and hit herself that hard?

I would say no because she's been twirling for five years now and she has been bonked and hit many, many times. My theory, and again, that's why I'm appealing to you. So we're back. Okay, slow down, slow down, slow down. So we're back to number one. Here's what I'm going to tell you that you have to deal with her. It is understandable that she'd hate his guts and want to get him in trouble.

but her character and say that it's totally understandable sweetheart that you hate his guts and wanted to get him in trouble but you sacrificed your character absolutely okay so sweetheart daughter of mine we're going to apologize to this kid in front of his parents and this is how she's going to apologize she's going to say i am sorry that i lied and said you hit me and the leg you're so mean to me in general

And say such ugly things to me and most of the kids in the class that it's hard to tolerate you. And so I did something wrong to get you back. And I apologize. I never should have lied because that's about my character. Now, I'm going to give you a tape of this call so that you can practice this with her. This is going to humiliate him tremendously because she's being completely forthright.

But she's making the case for that. She felt driven, but it was still wrong. So she's admitting to wrong. He's not. Everybody else, his parents, the principal, the teacher, are all standing there with your daughter saying the truth about him. This is going to be wonderful. I'm on board 100%. It's going to be wonderful. Can I ask you one more question? Yes, sir. Do you think by doing that, that that's enough punishment?

That in itself is the punishment for her. I don't want to punish her. She's a good kid. I don't want to punish her. No, she is. She's a good kid. Okay. So we don't need to punish. It's not like some ongoing bad behavior. All what we're doing is reinforcing her character. Yes, ma'am. And when you come out of that meeting, you pick her up in your arms, you give her a big hug and say, I'm so proud of you for what you just did. Yes, ma'am. Yep. She's my baby. Absolutely. Yes, ma'am. I'm with you.

Okay. And then when this is all said and done, call me back with her on the phone. Okay. You got it. Thank you. You'll hear from us again. Thank you. Thank you so much. You're very welcome, Ron. Yeah. Folks, don't jump into punishment. Don't. Discipline is about teaching. Remember the disciples? It's about teaching. And when you have a basically good kid and something ran amok, deal with that. Deal with that.

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