16 - Lying - Fibbing

Conventional wisdom:  Children are born pure and must learn to lie.
  ✔ Reality: Children are animals and lying for survival is instinctual.

Who took that cookie? What happened in here? Did you do this?  You know the answer to all these questions will be, not me,  and denial, or in other words lies, lies and more lies.  It is comical how faced with overwhelming evidence, or caught red handed, a child will deny culpability.  In fact after being punished or absolved of all wrongdoing and responsibility, children will still lie.     If a parent says, I don’t care about the cookie, but I care whether you are lying, the child will continue to lie.  I know, your child never lies, so for the sake of discussion we will only refer to someone else’s child.  (See, you too)

In the opening sentence the question was, who took that cookie,  which sounds accusatory and may easily trigger a survival lie. If the question were phrased slightly different, did you eat the cookie?” the answer may have been, “yes, can I have another one please.”  A child’s brain is not fully developed and does not process logical steps of being truthful to stay out of trouble. How children, infants, and toddlers behave or misbehave when young is partly if not wholly ingrained, or instinctual.     ✔Parents that miss this subtle animal trait and expect adult thinking are setting themselves up for frustration.

As children become older than infants and begin to intentionally lie, parents need to be careful how they phrase their interrogations so as to not trigger survival lies.  Do not be such a stickler for finding fault or setting blame, and let the little things slide.   Instead, use positive reinforcement (praise) when the truth is freely offered.  ✔Punishing one little insignificant lie is a mistake, and may set the stage  for more deceit and lying.  All one need do is take a look at the adult population both public and private to see that lying is a serious and popular pastime. Fortunately, for parents, most children, unlike politicians, are not good liars, and they tend to lie about things that don’t matter.

They will outgrow lying, no they wont, but they may get better at it!