I suffer from a dissociative disorder, and this is probably the best description of what it can be like that I've ever read. Really excellent job.

If you contact your local women's shelter, you can usually get free short term individual counselling through them. There doesn't have to be physical violence or danger. My local women's shelter helped me when I was processing some sexual trauma from way in my past. I am sure they'd help you. And help you find the tools you need to do whatever you decide to do. You should be able to Google women's shelter and your county and state to find one near you. You don't even have to give your real name if you don't want. Good luck!

Uh, I'm not sure what country you live in, but in this country, there are billions spent on advertising encouraging gluttony, entire political philosophies developed justifying greed, a myriad of media produced which has explicitely advocated for acceptance of divorce, lobbying groups for pornographers and on and on and on. It's is a complete denial of anything that resembles reality to claim that homosexuals are unique in their push for acceptance or that their demands for equal protection under the law represent some unusual, perverse attempt to bully the rest of us into accepting immorality. Your response simply illustrates Kirsten's point that when it comes to this one issue, Christians have taken leave of their ever loving senses.

If I may offer a suggestion. The more you press your kids on this, the more they are going to feel like you're trying to control them and the more perverse satisfaction they are going to get out of resisting you. Perhaps if you told them, "I keep bugging you to tell me about your day, but you've made it clear that you aren't willing to do that. So I won't ask again. If you don't want to share your day with me, that's your right. But I do think it's good for people who care about each other to share what's going on in their lives with each other, so would you mind if I shared a bit about my day with you?"
Then just make it a habit to have a few stories or interesting observations ready to share with them (You'll realize that what we are asking of our kids when we ask them to tell you about your day isn't as easy as we sometimes assume.) Try to make it interesting, include jokes, ask them to guess who you saw or what you did, etc so they get engaged. It might take some time, but one day your kids will be the ones walking in with a story to tell. You'll get what you want without them even realizing what happened.

I made sure my kids always heard and knew the proper words for body parts from the start. Then by age 5 we gave them a basic "tab a slot b" explanation of what sex was. With the first one it happened on accident while he was using a computer anatomy program. I would have thought it was too young, but I discovered that at that age it was just taken as information. There was no taboo yet and just seemed like any other bodily function. By presenting it so young as just a fact of life, it also made it a normal thing to talk about. As they got older we emphasized sex and sexuality as being all about intimacy and bonding. I think that because sex was always presented as being about intimacy rather than pleasure, my kids are rather mystified at the idea that so many people casually and carelessly share it with people who they are not in a permanent relationship with. We also made a point of explaining and offering counter arguments against the reasons so many people treat sex as simply a recreational activity.

I'm not an anti-spanking purist, but using that verse about sparing the rod to justify spanking drives me completely NUTS. A shepherd doesn't hit the sheep with his rod!!! Sheep are very skittish creatures and if the shepherd was hitting the sheep, he'd never be able to manage the flock. Instead he uses the rod to nudge the sheep into line, to help them get back on their feet when they calve themselves and when needed, to fight off a predator. In fact, an animal predator is about the only thing other than the ground that the shepherd would hit with his staff. Anyways, it's a ridiculous misuse of the verse to use it to support spanking. Makes no sense what-so-ever and flies in the face of reality and common sense, in fact.

In my experience as a mom and working with kids, a kid who is lying is usually a kid who is getting in trouble for too many things. The worst liars I have know had parents who were harsh with their discipline and had standards which were too high. (My husband and I used to both be particularly good liars after being raised in this sort of environment. We were so good at it that we got away with murder at home. And then we carried it into our adult lives because it was a useful tool for getting out of trouble and making our lives easier. As adults we each decided that it went against our values and did stop. But it does go to show that dealing with a kid who is lying by being even more punishing and demanding is completely counter-productive.

When kids are dealing with parents whose standards are too high and whose response to misbehavior is really harsh, lying becomes a reasonable defense for the kid. I'm not saying that's what's going on with you, but if you've got a sensitive kid, it could be that they are responding more strongly to discipline than you realize. I'm definitely not a harsh disciplinarian, but I've always taken an uptick in lying from my kids as a sign that I need to be more mindful and less punitive in my discipline.

With my kids, I have tried to be very selective about what issues I confront. A lot of times we expect our kids to be more perfect than any adult could be and jump on every infraction (I'm certainly guilty of this). It was hard, but I had to learn to let a lot of things go. When I did confront them about actual misbehavior (rather than absent minded stuff like running their hand on the wall going up the stairs or being grumpy - often because they are tired or hungry), I made sure that the point was correction. I remember once my son who was 6 asked if he was going to be punished and my response was, "I would prefer not to punish you if I can simply teach you and have you learn. But if you continue doing this, I will have to punish you to make you realize that I'm serious and you need to stop." Once I embraced this standard, punishing feel off to negligible levels and parenting became much easier.

I've also made a point of not being reactive when they admit to doing something wrong. Instead of lecturing or punishing, I just accept what they say neutrally and then treat it as a problem to be solved rather than an infraction to be dealt with.

Like others have said, I try not to give my kids a chance to lie. And when they do, I usually roll my eyes at them rather than get upset. I didn't punish for lying as a rule, but simply made them correct whatever it was they were lying about (like having done homework or fed the dog). Even without punishment, once they realized that lying wasn't effective, the problem just faded away.

My two oldest are now 14 and 18 and honest to a fault. With my daughters (now 8, 7 and 3) the lying thing hasn't been a problem - yet anyways. I think it's because raising their brothers taught me that being punitive and demanding was really counter-productive. I already kind of knew that because of the way I was raised, but as I parented them I realized that even my more-relaxed-than-my-parents standards and methods of disciplining were still high and harsh enough to be counter-productive.

Good luck!

Back in college when I began dating the black man who eventually became my husband, I started finding myself frequently being in settings where I was the only white person present. I noted that at first, I had this gut level discomfort and it occurred to me that each person in the room dealt with the.reverse experience all the time. That is they frequently found themselves being the only African American in a room of whites. And I realized that unlike me, these men and women would be completely justified in feeling uncomfortable being the only person of their race in a room. African Americans have never targeted whites for hatred, oppression and violence. Yet white people are the ones who feel that it's reasonable to fear and teach their children to fear African American men. It's crazy. But it does demonstrate just how self focused and lacking in empathy white attitudes towards the problem of racism is.

20 years and many very hard, painful conversations into being in an interracial partnership, I've come to see just what I think you are talking about here. White people have a tendency to make it all about us. If I'm racist or not. If my concerns are being addressed. If my perspective is properly understood. As if the biggest problem with race issues were our needs and not the desperate need to address the problems our African American brothers and sisters face!

During the 2008 presidential campaign I wrote quite a bit about race. I'm sure I did it imperfectly, but mostly what I wanted to do was to challenge the excuses white people use to justify passing judgment on the perspectives of black Americans. I've returned to the topic occasionally since then, mostly trying to be an advocate for black perspectives white folks tend to want to dismiss and explain away. I don't know if it's helped at all, but having had a front row seat to the often appalling challenges black men face, I am a firm believer that white people need to do a much better job in not just exploring our half of the issue, but in actually moving past ourselves and into a place of real empathy and advocacy for African Americans. But boy-oh-boy, are we white folks an obtuse lot!

I started off as a very media limiting mom who eventually removed all limits on media. Because like you say, putting limits simply creates this "when's my next fix" mentality. What I have found is that when the kids can access media whenever they want, they eventually reach a point of being satiated. Yes, there have been times when they do nothing but watch movies (we don't have cable, so that helps). But we go on spontaneous media fasts all the time. I think it's helped them learn to self-regulate more. Also my husband and I probably sit down to watch a movie once a week at most and use the computer largely for work and learning. So watching movies and playing games are kind of the purview of children around here. I don't know if it would work for others, but although it seems unorthodox, I'm pretty happy with the results.

Love. I just had someone on my site respond to a long series that I did which had required hundreds of hours of research by leaving a 1 sentence response (paraphrased):
"This is a lie from the pit of hell and it might be hard to to believe but I say that in love."
My response was "Oddly, I find nothing about your argument compelling." LOL. People. Gotta love 'em!