When Dekalb Walcott III was just 8 years old, his father, a Chicago fire chief, let him tag along on a call. Dekalb says a lot of kids idolized basketball player Michael Jordan when he was growing up in Chicago in the 1990s. Not him.

“I wanted to be like Dekalb Walcott Jr.,” he says of his father.

So when his dad asked if he wanted to go on that call with him when he was 8, Dekalb was excited. I’m jumping up and down，saying, “Mom, can I go? Can I go?”

The experience changed Dekalb’s life, he tells his dad on a visit to StoryCorps.“My eyes got big from the moment the alarm went off.” the younger Dekalb says. “This is the life that I want to live someday.”

Now 27, the younger Dekalb is living that life. He became a firefighter at 21 and went to work alongside his dad at the Chicago Fire Department. Before his father retired, the pair even went out on a call together-father supervising (监督) son.

“You know, it’s everything for me to watch you grow,”his father says. But he also recalls worrying about one particular fire that his son faced.

“I received a phone call that night.” And they said, “Well, your son was at this fire.” I said, “OK, which way is this conversation going to go?” Dekalb Walcott Jr. recalls.

And they said, “But he’s OK. And he put it out all by himself. Everybody here was proud of him.”

And the word went around, “Who was out there managing that fire? Oh, that’s Walcott! That’s Walcott up there! So, you know. moments like that, it’s heaven on Earth for a dad.”

Dekalb Walcott Jr. retired in 2009. The younger Dekalb says he’s proud of being a second-generation firefighter. “You know, it makes me look forward to fatherhood as well, because I’m definitely looking forward to passing that torch down to my son.”

When your child lies to you, it hurts. As parents, it makes us angry and we take it personally. We feel like we can never trust our child again. Why does lying cause such anger, pain and worry for parents?

Parents are understandably very afraid of their children getting hurt and getting into trouble, but they have very little protection against these things as they send their kids out into the word. Kids learn from other kids and from external media, and this makes parents feel unsafe because they can’t control the information and ideas that their children are exposed to.

When your kid lies, you start to see him as “sneaky（卑鄙的）”, especially if he continues to lie to you. You feel that he’s going behind your back. You begin to think that your kids are “bad”. Because, certainly, if lying is bad, liars are bad. It’s just that simple. Parents need to make their kids responsible for lying. But the mistake parents make is that they start to blame the kid for lying. It’s considered immoral to lie. But when you look at your kid like he’s a sneak, it’s a slippery slope （滑坡谬误）that starts with “You lie” and ends up at “You’re a bad person”.

Kids know lying is forbidden. But they don’t see it as hurtful. So a kid will say, “I know it’s wrong that I eat a sugar snack when I’m not supposed to. But who does it hurt?” “I know it’s wrong that I trade my dried fruit for a Twinkie. But it doesn’t really hurt anybody. I can handle it. What’s the big deal?” That’s what the kid sees.

So I think that parents have to assume that kids are going to tell them lies, because they’re immature and they don’t understand how hurtful these things are. They’re all drawn to excitement, and they’ll all have a tendency to distort(歪曲) the truth because they’re kids.