Is your teenager lying to you? Probably. Think back: when you were a teen, did you ever lie to your parents or shade the truth in a way your parents would think was lying if they had known the whole story? Did you ever tell a portion of the truth, but not the whole truth? Have you done such things even as an adult? Even as recently as last week?

Studies have shown that 98% of American adults lie, meaning they don’t tell the whole truth all the time but edit the facts to protect themselves or to protect the person they’re lying to. A current insurance ad shows a fictive Abe Lincoln failing to lie to his wife at a moment when most of us would believe the kindest act would be to tell an untruth.

In the instances when a lie protects ourselves, not the listener, we may be forgiven for wanting to stay out of trouble. Guilt and shame are uncomfortable emotions most of us want to avoid. When guilt is accompanied by a punishment, we want to avoid admitting guilt even more. So lying is a natural reaction to wanting to avoid punishment and feel guilty and ashamed, as well as a way to avoid worrying or hurting the people we love. For children and teens, whose sense of integrity is still under development but whose sense of self-preservation is working just fine, lying seems like the logical course much of the time.

So is your teenager lying to you? Most likely, yes. The main question is what should you do about it?

First, never try to trap your child in a lie. If you know the truth or have a good suspicion, then don’t ask about the incident and provide an opportunity to lie. Instead, say what you know: “I see the bumper on the car is dented. Tell me about that.” This will get you more information than asking, “Did you dent the bumper?”

Second, never penalize the truth. This is a hard one, but it’s essential. When your child says, “Yes, I backed into a fence post when we took the car off-roading last night after Tommy gave us some beer,” you will be sorely challenged. But if you punish your child for telling the truth, you’ll never hear the truth again. So, after a stunned silence you will simply say, “Thanks for telling me. How do you plan to fix the bumper?” Later, you will talk about taking the car off-road and about Tommy and beer. But you will not punish your child for telling you the truth.

Third, model what you want to see. Tell your child the truth when she asks and if you can’t tell the truth about something, tell her that you can’t. But don’t lie. Demonstrate what integrity looks like. Telling the truth about anything is a leap of faith. Let your kids know that you can be trusted with the secrets they might want to keep to themselves.

How we raise our boys has all to do with how entitled they feel as they grow to manhood—how entitled they feel to hold power over girls and weaker boys, how entitled they feel to do as they please. Our culture is steeped in male entitlement, so we must work hard to support our sons in ways that our culture does not.

As shocking as it is in this day and age, men abusing women seems to hit the news on a regular basis. Date rapes seem to be an acceptable activity among college men. It’s not out of the sphere of our boys to find themselves in such a climate. We must raise our boys to not only shun these activities but to call out their friends to put a stop to it being “cool”.

Sportswriter Dan Wetzel wrote for Yahoo News that, “Rape, experts say, is a crime of power and control more than sex. Underlying all of that is arrogance….A culture of arrogance [can create] a group mindset of debauchery and disrespect, of misplaced manhood and lost morality.”

This is the culture of “toxic masculinity”, as Jaclyn Friedman calls it, which I believe is responsible for misogynistic put downs and jokes, sexist discrimination, the on-going world-wide culture of rape, submission of women, and unequal pay for equal work.

Much of this will not change except from the ground up. Let’s make sure that ground is firmly supporting our boys to be sensitive and respectful of all other people’s feelings and experiences. In order to develop that, our boys must experience our sensitivity to theirs.

One of my proudest moments of my son happened when he was playing soccer against another town. My son was goalie and that day every ball sailed past him into the net. When the boys were leaving the field, a boy from the other team taunted him with, “You suck as goalie.” My son came back with, “Yeah, I guess I’m having a bad day.” Many parents would have felt embarrassed, wishing he had retaliated, even punched the other kid. I was proud that he was not ashamed of his temporary weakness. I was proud that he didn’t see his poor performance as a failure. I was proud that he knew how to deflect a hurtful comment and stand down a bullish remark while standing tall. The wind was knocked out of the other boy’s bravado. My son came out the stronger of the two.

Parents must start early raising boys to be respectful, open, emotional men. We must acknowledge how important it is to:

• Allow boys to have and express their emotions.
• Teach boys that crying is healing and kindness wins them friendship and respect.
• Make sure they know mistakes are just mistakes and how to make amends.
• Intervene when seeing “pack mentality”, often a result of team sports.
• Empower them to speak out when they see injustice and bullying.
• Encourage boys to babysit, do their own laundry, cook.
• Teach that true bravery means having courage when you are scared. It doesn’t mean not being scared.
• Provide acceptable outlets for aggression rather than stopping aggressive impulses.
• Refuse to accept that “boys will be boys” when they take out their aggression on others.

Fathers must:

• Stay present in your sons’ lives.
• Say, “I love you” and “I’m sorry” over and over. Snuggle and kiss daily.
• Change diapers, give baths, kiss boo-boos, hug, nurture.
• Do household chores together. Enjoy their company.
• Admit mistakes, make amends, cry.
• Model vulnerability. Express emotions.
• Respect all women. Never tell sexist jokes. Especially not in the company of your sons.
• Teach the lesson to never touch a girl without her consent.
• Talk about “toxic masculinity” and the pack mentality of the entitled male. Share stories from the past that can teach lessons. Share news events appropriately and use them for letting your son know what you think.

  These interventions require self-reflection and vulnerability—something that does not come easily for most men. We must look hard at what our culture not only accepts but supports in male behavior and change that culture in our homes. We can and must put a stop to male entitlement once and for all.

Well, of course not! No teen in the Universe ever thought his parents are perfect.

But are you trying to convince your teen that you are perfect? Are you living a lie?

Here’s what I mean. We moms and dads sometimes sweep our own mistakes under the rug. We don’t let our kids know we’ve ever erred. We try to give the impression that we’ve never had a moment of doubt, never had a run-in with the law, never did anything we’re ashamed of now, and never, ever took a wrong turn and had to back up and try another path.

This myth of our perfection props up our credibility as parents. We think that by disguising our mistakes we set the bar high for our kids. We can truly say we want our children to be as wonderful as we are – or as wonderful as we tell them we’ve always been.

In actuality, of course, we want our kids to be better than we were. We’re terrified they will make our own dumb mistakes.

This is where our logic falls down. By not sharing with our teens our experiences with the hard, cruel world we miss out on the best examples we can provide of what not to do and of what to do instead.  We tie our own hands.

Imagine, for example, that your teen is going to a party. Should you tell your kid about the time you went to a high school friend’s party when no adults were there, liquor was plentiful, a huge fight broke out on the front lawn, and the police were called? Maybe you don’t. Maybe you just forbid your child to go to the party but don’t tell her why. Maybe you let her go, but give her a long list of rules you expect her to follow. Either way, your teen is not likely to understand why you’re being so restrictive.

But if you tell her what happened to you and if you let her learn from your mistakes, she will be more prepared to avoid this mistake herself.  She might still go to the party but now she’s armed with understanding that you had to learn the hard way.

If every teen has to learn everything on his own, reinventing the wheel, the same mistakes will be made in every generation. If, though, you admit to have been less than perfect and to have suffered some consequences in your own teen years, you educate your kid and really help him out.

Sharing your adolescent ups and downs has other benefits. It makes you more human, for one thing, and more approachable. If you weren’t a paragon of virtue, your child can admit to getting into trouble too.

It cements your relationship to your teen, by deepening the understanding between you. Your teen knows you know what it’s like to be under pressure from friends. She knows you know what it’s like to feel confused.

And it lets your teen know that his present state of inner turmoil and confusion is not permanent. Just as you overcame your teenage struggles, so will he. Knowing you’ve not been perfect even though now you seem to have things figured out gives teens hope. It makes them stronger.

And aren’t strong, self-assured children what you wanted all along?

© 2014, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Parenting: A Field Guide, at your favorite bookstore.