The kids know what they can get away with in this house. They are getting big. They like to do things for themselves. They don’t want Mom and Dad to help them. Working together to get things done, is what they do.
I let them know that they can only go so far with what they do. It is better to tell the truth now, than to hold off. I tell them that I won’t get as mad. If they don’t tell me the truth, right away, It gets worse. They know this.
There are times when they tell me right away when something is broken or something went wrong. I usually as if they learned something. I don’t get as mad as I used to. We are all growing. If they can learn to find a good thing from a mistake they are well on their way to continuous growing.