It may or may not surprise you but I was quite the liar in my younger years. Now I learn it’s to be expected considering how cognitively advanced I was. *cough*
It starts very young. Indeed, bright kids—those who do better on other academic indicators—are able to start lying at 2 or 3. “Lying is related to intelligence,” explains Dr. Victoria Talwar, an assistant professor at Montreal’s McGill University and a leading expert on children’s lying behavior.
Although we think of truthfulness as a young child’s paramount virtue, it turns out that lying is the more advanced skill. A child who is going to lie must recognize the truth, intellectually conceive of an alternate reality, and be able to convincingly sell that new reality to someone else. Therefore, lying demands both advanced cognitive development and social skills that honesty simply doesn’t require. “It’s a developmental milestone,” Talwar has concluded.
This puts parents in the position of being either damned or blessed, depending on how they choose to look at it. If your 4-year-old is a good liar, it’s a strong sign she’s got brains. And it’s the smart, savvy kid who’s most at risk of becoming a habitual liar.
~New York Magazine
Now I’ll have to try and remember when or if Stephen started lying to me….
The New York Magazine article by Po Bronson is excellent. From it I learned why kids lie (and all kids do it a lesser or greater degree):
-
To feel like they’re in control
-
To assert status
-
To avoid punishment
-
To increase their power
-
To cope with frustration
-
To get attention (/me raises hand)
-
To be polite, i.e., thanks for a (crappy) gift
-
To be autonomous and independent from their parents
While parents can’t stop kids from lying, it is possible to teach them the value of honesty. That if they are honest, the punishment or disappointment is less severe than if they’d chosen to lie. And most importantly, there’s no reason to test kids’ honesty or put them in a position to lie by asking whether or not they did something when you know full well they did. Better to be straightforward, explain why they shouldn’t have done something, and leave it at that.
In any case, you can’t get me to ‘fess up publicly on all the lying I’ve done in my sordid past. But feel free to spill some of your own lies. I’m all ears!
5 Comments »
Do I look like dancer material? British ballet company Balletlorent is recruiting 12 pregnant women to star in MaEternal along with six professional ballet dancers.
). I still cook at least five or six days out of the week but I do not like it. I don’t like cooking but I have to do it and I do it well.
