Parents, Your White Lie About Pain May Backfire

When she was a child, Allison Sweet Grant underwent leg surgery and followup procedures that doctors told her wouldn't result in much pain. They meant well, but the "difference between what I was told and what I experienced shattered my faith in doctors and left me questioning whether I could trust adults at all," the author writes in a New York Times essay. As a result, she always tells her own children the truth about what they will experience in any medical procedure, even if it's just a "big pinch" when getting blood drawn. And she encourages others parents and health care providers to do the same—because doing otherwise might actually make things worse.

• "(W)hen the pain does inevitably come, it's accompanied by a heaping side of betrayal. Lies that mislead children about their experiences are not white lies. Though they may appear innocuous, they erode the fabric of the fundamental and necessary trust between parent and child. They create an emotional wound not easily healed. The pain of discovering you have been deceived by a trusted adult can cut deeper and last longer than the pain of an unavoidable medical intervention."

Read the full essay by Sweet Grant, whose debut novel I Am the Cage is based on her experiences as a young patient. (More parenting stories.)