Ep #407: When You’re Accused of Lying

Hello, empowered principals. Welcome to episode 407.

Welcome to The Empowered Principal® Podcast, a not so typical educational resource that will teach you how to gain control of your career and get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy by refining your most powerful tool, your mind. Here’s your host certified life coach Angela Kelly.

Well, hello, my beautiful, empowered principals. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the podcast. If you’re new around here, we are so happy you are here. And hey, if you are in the fall dip and the burn is real right now, you’re overwhelmed, you’re fatigued, you’re discouraged, you are exhausted, just know that combination is what’s creating the fall dip. It’s a collective little funkiness that people get into. And when people are feeling discouraged, disappointed, a little fatigued or a lot fatigued, and a lot of overwhelm, you add those components together, those feelings into one, and the outcome is the fall dip.

And when people get into the fall dip, what happens is they start to vent. They might commiserate. They might blame a little bit. They might ask you to come and do the heavy lifting for them because they’re tired. Or they want you to direct them or you to tell them what to do because they’re overwhelmed. Or they try to overwork and get in the overwhelm cycle even more because they’re spinning out of control so bad.

That’s the fall dip. When collectively the energy on campus, the frequency of your campus is in a little bit of a funk. And it’s normal. You’re not alone. I haven’t talked to a school leader across this nation that hasn’t felt this experience, this phenomenon that happens. I just coined it the fall dip because I see it happen in the fall after the peak and all the hype of a brand new school year and the kickoff of the year and getting ready, and that anticipation wears off, and we get into a routine. We have the whole year ahead of us. And we’re like, whoa.

Now the work is starting. The expectations are real. The demands are mounting. The deadlines are approaching. We’ve got to get these kids learning. We’ve got to get the test scores. We’ve got to make sure they’re making progress. And all of that internal pressure and external pressure ramps up. The volume goes to level 10 and people start to worry and feel anxious and get stressed and freak out. And when they’re in that, their nervous system is in fight or flight. And they start to feel a little funky. They start to be a little crabby. They might be kind of complaining, or whiny, or venting, blaming, all of those things.

So, when that happens, first of all, know it’s normal. Second of all, join EPC. We’re talking about it. There will be other dips. Each season has a little bit of its own dip. There’s a winter dip, a spring dip, and even summer has its own dip if you can believe that or not. It happens as we’re thinking about coming back to school. Not when we’re at school, but when we’re thinking about it, we get a little bit like, oh no. No. And we grasp onto summer and we feel that little dip in feeling that summer’s not long enough, that summer needs to last longer, that we need more time, that we’re not looking forward to going back to school. You know that feeling when your angst when you open up your emails and there’s like 300 emails? Yeah. So even summer has its own dips.

Okay. So, the fall dip is right now. It’s happening. And there are ways that you can redirect it, you can reframe it, you can navigate it in a way that’s much more empowering. So, the fall dip class that I just taught, it speaks to that specifically, and in EPC, we take individual circumstances and we work through them to help you stay empowered throughout your entire week. So, I invite you in to the Empowered Principal Collaborative. You and a friend bring, bring them all. The more the merrier. We love to create community, to create a sense of safety and belongingness and love and appreciation and all of those things we’re looking for at our school from our communities, from our families, from our staff. We just create it for ourselves here. We love on each other. We support one another. It’s a beautiful community to be in. It’s a part, I believe, the empowered principal movement, which is changing the experience of education for leaders, teachers, and students.

All right. I had a client who was very upset. She scheduled a one-on-one with me because she’d had an incident with a child and it started off as a normal behavior situation. So incident occurs, it gets reported, she initiates an investigation, and eventually upon conversing with students who were directly involved, the student who was accused of the behavior admitted to the principal that yes, in fact, they did the thing that they were told on for, that they were accused of. Okay.

So, this can be any student, any behavior. We’ve seen it happening before. So, student admits it to you. You’re writing up your reports, your investigation. You’re letting people at home know, the adults at home know the situation and your perspective on it and your decision around the consequences that are going to follow that are appropriate to the behavior.

The student goes home and says to the parents or to the family members that are guardians, no, I didn’t do that. And they are adamant. They did not do it. They, I don’t know what the principal is talking about. I never said that. I never did that. And now, the adult at home is like, wait a minute. Principal said this. My kid said that. And they come to you and they confront you because they’re confused. The parent says, wait a minute, you told me this and they told me that.

Now, we’re in a situation where it’s someone’s telling the truth and someone’s not. We’ve got a right or wrong, good, bad, we’ve got an all or none situation here, and it doesn’t feel good because it feels like it’s a win loss. And when that student comes in with the parent, you say, okay, well, we can resolve this. The parent tells their version, the child tells their version and they’re saying, no, I didn’t do it. And you’re looking at the two and feeling at a loss, feeling like you’ve been called a liar, that you have not told the truth, that you are the one not telling the truth.

That can feel very confrontational. It can feel very attacking. And if we’re not mindful of our body’s reaction to that attack or to that accusation or to even the inference that we might not be telling the truth, we may react in defensiveness. I know I do. Just ask my sister. When accused, my fight or flight will kick in faster than I can even brain think and I will go right into defensiveness, and I will fight right back. Or if I feel like the attack is too threatening, I will shut down. I will literally just stop talking. I will leave the room if I can. So, my fight or flight will choose all three options if possible. It will try to fight and then it will shut down and then it will leave the room.

So, know the signals in your body, know the triggers. When somebody’s speaking in a room and a child is like, no, I never said that. I don’t know why the principal is saying that. I never did it. All of a sudden, now you feel like it’s kind of this two against one and they’re looking at you like, why are you saying this about my child? Why are you saying this? I never said that. And you start to feel a little bit like, what is happening here? Why is this turning on me? Am I being gaslit?

So, when, first of all, I want to point out that in that moment, when a child is saying something differently to a parent than to you, we want to consider why that might be happening. And I also want you to consider that in that moment, if you react and you start to get defensive, or you start to call that kid out or pressure them back and you’re in fight mode and you’re attacking back, or you’re like pedaling backwards and feeling like, well, maybe I was wrong or maybe I’m doubting myself. If you are in fight or flight mode, the person in the room at that moment who has the floor is the child. The child is owning that conversation. The child is leading that conversation, which is very important to remember because we as leaders are striving to be the most emotionally regulated person in the room.

Now, we’re humans. It doesn’t always work that way, but it’s our goal. And we take classes or we take courses, we hire a coach, we listen to podcasts like this, we jump into EPC, we read books, we do things that help us learn tricks and tips and strategies on how to emotionally regulate ourselves because we want to be in a leadership position. But in that moment, when the kid’s saying something different and you’re feeling called out, they have the floor. They’re taking the lead. They’ve got the mic. And if you attack back, you’re pressuring that kid to wait for them to speak up and put them on the hot seat and make them feel cornered.

Now, if you think about why a child would tell you one thing, and you know the truth of it and you probably documented it, but even so, they go home and tell their parents something different, a couple of reasons why this happens. The primary reason is that the child is afraid to death. Remember how when you got in trouble, you would think to yourself, my dad’s going to kill me, my mom’s going to kill me. Like we literally thought death was upon us if we did something wrong, said something wrong, behaved in a way that was unbecoming or not alignment with our family’s values. We were so afraid.

And in that childlike state, when you are that afraid, especially if you had parents who were physically punishing you or really emotionally punishing you or maybe punishments were so severe. Maybe you were over punished and so you had a legitimate fear, whether that was a physical punishment or like you were grounded for life or grounded for a month, or you had all of your technology taken away, something that felt so threatening, so fearful that in a moment of panic, the child is going to do whatever they can to try and avoid that pain, whether that’s physical pain, mental pain, emotional pain, psychological pain. We don’t know what happens to kids at home.

So, if they’re that afraid to tell the truth at home, it could be that they’re just so afraid of the consequence or they’re afraid of the reaction, or something’s going to be withdrawn from them, or they’re going to receive physical punishment. Now, there are times when that does happen and then there are times when just children are afraid of a regular punishment. They’re not in danger. They’re not in danger physically or mentally or emotionally, psychologically, but they just don’t want the consequence. They don’t want their phone taken away for a day or a week. They don’t want to have to listen to the lecture, or they don’t want to have to repair and apologize. That’s different, right?

But we want to be mindful that when a child says one thing and then goes and says another thing that they are in such fear that they are in fight or flight. They’re so afraid versus how dare you come in and call me a liar or infer that I’m lying. I would never lie. That’s on you. You’re the liar. We pick up the rope. We get in the tug of war with the child and now we’re both on the hot seat. Who’s right, who’s wrong? And we’re throwing that kid under the bus when we go into a tug of war with them. So, consider why a child would say one thing to you and then go home and say something else to their family.

Of course, they’re freaking out. They’re so afraid. They’re in that young little mindset. They don’t know an alternate way. They don’t feel that they can handle the public embarrassment of being, you know, in trouble in front of their friends. You know how embarrassing it was to be in trouble in front of your friends at school? And then to go home and get in trouble in front of your siblings or to have your parents be upset with you. That felt terrible. These are people that you love, you care about, or you’re genuinely afraid of them. You’re genuinely afraid of what they’re going to say or what they’re going to do. Are they going to withdraw emotionally? Are they going to mentally, verbally say something that’s so hurtful that causes trauma? Are they going to physically punish somebody that causes physical pain and shame and embarrassment?

We don’t know. So we want to be mindful of that, right? So when you’re accused of lying, notice your own reaction to that. Notice if the child is now trying to have the floor because they feel no power. They are so afraid. And when you stay in alignment with your truth, you know what the child said and you also understand why they might have told the story that they told at home. Then we can approach with some compassion in, tell me more. What came up for you? I’m hearing this one story here. I believe this is what I heard you say. The story sounds different. We just want to get to the bottom of it. Is there something that you’re afraid of? And approaching the question.

And what’s interesting is in this case, when I asked the principal how she ended up handling it, she actually handled it in a very empowered way. Even though she was feeling attacked on the inside and after the fact, she was stewing on, how dare that child call me a liar. The way she handled it was, tell us more, what are you afraid of? Let’s talk this through. And the parent was actually very understanding and was not overreacting, at least in front of the principal to the child. And appreciated and understood why the child was saying what they were saying. Eventually, the child, through conversation, did admit to the action, the behavior, the words that were said.

And when the principal is not trying to defend their honesty, their truth, their integrity, and worried that people are going to think that you’re lying, then you can be in the mindset of service. When you’re in empowerment, you are in the mindset of service. How can I serve this family? Let’s work with the parent and the child to work through it together hand in hand, knowing it’s just a developmental stage for kids. It’s a natural thing to want to get out of trouble. And they’ve learned that lying sometimes does work and does get them out of a pickle once in a while. Sometimes it works, which is why we lie.

And hey, when someone calls us a liar, I’m going to go 2.0 on you here. The truth is that we all lie. We don’t call it lying when we grow up. We say, oh, I’m sorry, I can’t come to that party. I’m not feeling well, when really you just want to lay on the couch and watch Netflix and you don’t want to go mingle. It’s not really a lie. I just don’t feel like it. Or our husband says, did you get the oil change in the car? You’re like, oh, yes, I was going to do that. I totally got overwhelmed at work when really you just forgot.

We do say little white lies we call them, but we are telling something we know isn’t exactly the truth or omitting the truth of the full truth. And look, it’s not to say you’re out of integrity or you’re a bad person, and we make it mean, oh, we’re a bad person when we lie. No, every human on the planet doesn’t tell the full truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God all of the time. We want to lean into the fact that, yes, it’s understandable that sometimes we say things in a way that makes us feel more comfortable about saying no or about forgetting or about not doing something we said we would do, or about dropping the ball. It happens.

So we can lean into, yeah, sometimes I do. Officer, why were you speeding? Oh, I really have to go to the bathroom or I’m late to or my grandmother’s dying. We say some crazy stuff. When we feel like we’re going to get in trouble, when we feel like the consequences are going to be so painful, we will say things in a way that we try to smooth it out. So, can you embrace the fact that yeah, I understand why kids try to wiggle out of pain because we try to wiggle out of pain. We try to make our answers or our choices or our forgetfulness or when we drop the ball, we try to make that more comfortable for ourselves and less uncomfortable for the others around us. When our husband’s like, oh, okay, you just got busy at work, then he’s not upset that you just dropped the ball and didn’t get the oil changed. You hear where I’m going with this? Okay.

Lean into it. There is truth in that in this moment, you are telling the full truth and you were sharing very openly. And yes, it’s also equally true that sometimes we do soften our responses or the reason behind something because we don’t want to take that full radical accountability, relentless ownership of our humanness to say, oh my gosh, you’re right. I forgot to call. Let me do that and I’ll get the oil change this weekend. Or let me make an appointment. Oh, you’re right. That was something I said I would do and I didn’t. Or I would love to come to the party, but in full honesty, I don’t feel like I have the energy to mingle. Can I take a rain check?

So I like to lean into slightly uncomfortable truth because one, it makes me remember that I am a person of truth, even when I’m also a human who might soften the truth in order to not hurt somebody’s feelings or to get out of something painful or to forgive myself for being human and forgetting and dropping the ball. So play with that this week. See how it lands for you. And we can embrace that we all don’t always tell the truth, but we can embrace the truth of our integrity knowing that we’re still a good person and we are telling the truth and we don’t need to let children take the stage, call us a liar, or infer that we’re lying, and then pick up the rope and have a tug of war with them. Okay?

Go be human, be empowered. Have the most beautiful week and I’ll talk to you next week. Take great care of yourselves. Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Empowered Principal® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please visit angelakellycoaching.com where you can sign up for weekly updates and learn more about the tools that will help you become an emotionally fit school leader.