Passionate Parenting

Parenting Newsletter (2010) by Angela Hutchison –

Parenting Skills Coach, Cape Town, SA.

Why do kids lie?

There are a number of reasons for children lying:

1. They are learning when it is ok to bend the truth i.e learning from us
2. They tell you, the parent, what they think you want to hear
3. They lie out of fear of the consequences of telling the truth

1/ So when is it ok to bend the truth? You all probably remember that joke with the 1950’s family eating at a restaurant when the parents ask for a “doggy bag” and the child remarks loudly, while the waitress is still in earshot, “yay, are we getting a dog?” while the parents cringe.  Now today we live in a world where most of you are quite content with saying the leftovers are for your own lunch tomorrow, but there are a million other societal examples that we still lie about. 

Where does one draw the line between tact and a lie? – say your small child has just heard you gush to a friend how much you love the lamp that friend has just given you and then has heard you say in the privacy of your own home how hideous it is.  If your child were to quiz you on this lie, you would say you were trying to spare your friend’s feelings.  Are we modelling that it is ok to lie to protect other people from the truth so they don’t feel bad?  And how far are we allowed to take that deception?  At what point would the fact that deception had taken place be way more hurtful to the feelings than the truth?

Two authors I’ve read vowed to not lie for a period of time – Martha Beck, author of Expecting Adam, gave up lying for a year – she said she spoke especially carefully that year to ensure that what she said was in fact truthful.  She found it incredibly difficult.  And if any of you have read “my year of living biblically” by AJ Jacobs, a very humorous account of following the Bible to the letter, AJ gets himself into some very sticky situations telling the truth and admits to lying at least once a day.

His daily lies are those that parents constantly tell children – “no you can’t have a biscuit, there aren’t any”, when the cupboard is full of them and we can’t be bothered to deal with the fallout when we say “I don’t want you to have one”.  I watched this backfire on a parent recently whose child had asked for some Coke – he didn’t want the child to have Coke and so he immediately said “it’s finished”.  A little friend’s voice piped up “I’ll share mine”.  Nothing like small children to teach you about the truth.

2/ The second reason children lie is slightly more complex.  When children live in a world where the parent is always right, where the parent discounts the child’s feelings, where the parent provides endless solutions to the child’s problems without the child ever feeling empowered to find those solutions, then the child lives in a space asking the question: “what does my parent want to hear in this situation?”  The child then has to second-guess your mood, your state of mind, effectively has to think like you before speaking and may end up getting that wrong and getting caught in the “lie” – which is simply an approval-seeking mission – telling you what you want to hear.  We do best to give our children freedom to express their views, acknowledge their feelings and set the appropriate boundaries to contain them.  The boundary speaks volumes without creating additional emotional layers about what was said and what may have been a lie.

3/ The third reason children lie is to escape the consequences of their actions.  This is a big argument against harsh punishment like smacking and taking away privileges.  Children would rather lie than suffer those consequences.  When they get caught in the lie, we lambaste them for the lie, without understanding what is going on and setting appropriate logical consequences related to the behaviour, where the child learns that the lie did not benefit them and it is not worth repeating, rather than letting them think if they can avoid trouble lying is ok. 

You will possibly remember my example around why we don’t steal – the answer being out of respect, not because we could get locked up.  We need to model the same for children around lying – why don’t we lie – because it breaks trust and the consequences are related to that, rather than we don’t lie because you get into trouble for lying.  Again, children start believing that if you can avoid the trouble by pushing the lie, lying becomes ok.  Recently a little boy I know lied to me about taking a chocolate.  His consequence was the lack of that chocolate in his party box.  His learning, I say hopefully, was that it did not aide him having that chocolate earlier and it did not aide him to lie about it.

We need to offer our children:

daily experiences of watching us being trustworthy and

daily examples of trusting them. 

Avoid if you can making promises to your children – particularly ones you cannot keep.  “I promise I will never leave you”, “I promise if you go to bed now you can have a chocolate in the morning” – promises which with less desperation, we rethink.  They can become lies too.  And when we provide too many solutions to our children, when we answer for them, we send a message to them that they are not capable, that we do not trust them to be trustworthy.

Send me any thoughts or examples you have on this, if you like.

Love

Angela

Re-published with permission of Angela Huchison

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