Own Relationship With Dishonesty Is More Complex

How, then, to account for the fact that children become only more adept at dishonesty as they grow up? The seventh graders, though, consistently fooled the observers. Their lies about how the drink tasted were successful. And the group of college students dissembled so successfully that they convinced many observers that they were tasting the good drink when, in fact, they were tasting the bad one. A lot of parents claim that lying is something that children grow out of. For decades, surveys of parents have shown that honesty is the trait they most hope their children will display. There are a number of answers to this question, which we will explore in the following section. Once upon a time, a young boy named George Washington was given a new hatchet. When George’s father saw the dead tree, he was horrified. He confronted the future Founding Father and demanded to know whether he was the one who had cut down the tree. George declared, I cannot tell a lie! and confessed. George’s father wasn’t angry, though. He explained that George’s honesty was more valuable than any tree, and forgave him.

The Way That It Goes

The story of George Washington and the cherry tree remains a popular one in elementary schools across the country. Yet even this seemingly straightforward tale contains ambiguity with regard to the truth. Even when we feel we are being clear, the message is often mixed. Perhaps this shouldn’t surprise us. As we have seen, our own relationship with dishonesty is more complex than we generally acknowledge. It’s important to keep this complexity in mind when examining how children learn to lie. Many children have heard the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. Many others have also heard stories with parallel morals, such as those of the boy who cried wolf or Pinocchio. As we’ve seen, lies are a common feature of everyday life. A parent tells her boss that she’s as sick as a dog and can’t come to work, yet makes an amazing recovery as soon as she puts down the phone. A father tells his son he’s too tired to play with him, yet later goes out to a bar with his friends. A mother assures her neighbor that she loves her new lawn gargoyle, then tells a friend that it looks hideous.

Have A Little Faith

Children are witness to these lies. We might like to think that preschool children can’t recognize fabricated evening plans or a false compliment, but within a few years these are just the kinds of lies children themselves are telling. It probably shouldn’t surprise us so much to hear children lying in the service of their social and psychological needs. They are only doing what their parents, teachers, aunts, and uncles do. I call the people who, through their actions and behavior, implicitly teach children to lie, Model Liars. Of course, children’s lies don’t always reflect a deliberate effort to manipulate others. This is true of the lies children tell, as well. Nonetheless, their primary concern is not usually to manipulate or defraud their fellow kindergartener, any more than this is the intent of the woman in line ahead of us at the movies who fibs about her résumé. Lying is not necessarily evidence of wickedness. It’s merely evidence that children are human beings too, and, in social situations, employ some of the same tactics as their elders. There is also another important way in which children are led to deceit by the example, and even the explicit instruction, of adults. To understand how this occurs, imagine that you are the parent of a child involved in the flattery experiment I described earlier.

One Step Closer

Your kindergartener is being asked to evaluate a series of drawings, sometimes with the artist present, sometimes not. When sitting across from the creator of a drawing you know your child hates, would you really want your child to be honest? Or would you hope your child would do the polite thing and couch his true opinions with some false praise? These are difficult questions because parents want their children to be honest and polite. Often, though, these two values come into conflict. For young children, it’s not easy to grasp the nuances of situations in which they are supposed to lie. While eventually children do, usually with the help of their parents, master the art of little white lies, this simply means they’ve mastered a form of deceit. Despite the stories we tell children, then, the fact is that there is honesty we punish and deception we encourage. I think any parent would confess to having lied to his or her child at some point. Often, these lies are intended to protect the child from a harsh or complex truth. We probably couldn’t blame a parent who lied to his or her young child rather than elucidate some of the finer points of conception and teen pregnancy. Unfortunately, when children realize they have been lied to, the motives behind the deception are often less important, and less comprehensible, than the fact of the deception itself. When one examines the broad range of exposure children have to the practice of dishonesty, we can see why they lie with the frequency they do. They overhear the adults in their lives, their models for more sophisticated social and mental behavior, lying to one another regularly. Their parents and teachers often explicitly instruct them to lie when civility demands it. And they themselves are lied to, often by the people they trust most in the world. However, as we’ve discussed, the bulk of the lies children tell are told without malice. Moreover, it is overly simplistic to view the manifestation of deceit in children in a wholly negative light. Or he or she can be demonstrating a sensitivity to someone else’s feelings too. Specifically, a crucial step in children’s mental growth is their development of what’s called theory of mind. Theory of mind doesn’t refer to a theory held by psychologists to explain a particular phenomenon.