Why Do Children Lie (Part One) Copied

Three-year-old Sally was playing happily in the kitchen while her mother cleaned up the dinner dishes. As Sally's mom turned to collect another plate from the table, she noticed a puddle on the floor under Sally's feet. "Sally, honey, did you wet your pants?" Sally shook her head and said, "My shoes did it." 

Clearly, Sally has told her mother a lie. Like most parents, you might feel shocked — angry, hurt, or even betrayed — when you first discover your child has lied. But if you can step back and view lying as a part of your child's emotional and intellectual development, you will find that telling lies doesn't condemn your child to a life of betrayal or serious behaviour problems. In fact, recent research has shown that lying plays a positive role in normal development. Essential human skills — independence, perspective taking, and emotional control — are the same skills that enable children to lie.

Conventional wisdom long held that young children were not capable of lying. More recent research, however, has found that most children learn to lie effectively between the ages of 2 and 4. The first successful lie can be pegged as a developmental achievement because it marks the child's discovery that her mind and thinking are separate from her parents'. This same understanding is marked by the discovery of the word no, which helps young children delineate the boundaries between their own desires, thoughts, and feelings, and those of others.

Like everything else, children learn to lie from the people around them. Parents and teachers show children in subtle — and not so subtle — ways to suppress their honesty. "Look at that funny man," a child will yell. "I don't like this," she'll say of Grandma's gift. "Yuck," he says about food that doesn't taste good. Adults slowly teach children that this kind of honesty is not always welcome —that there is a fine line between telling the truth and not hurting other people. Children also observe active lying by the adults in their lives. (One research study found that adults admit to lying an average of 13 times a week!) We all tell lies of convenience, and our children watch and learn — but not always so literally.

To Be Continued...