When children tell lies
My friend’s daughter once told her mum, “teacher said that nobody should go home and tell tales.” This was rather amusing coming from a six-year-old and her mum tried to probe further by asking, “Did anybody tell tales?”
“Yes now, Maureen told her mummy that teacher threw her glasses away and beat her on her bum bum when she didn’t even do anything.”
My friend and I exchanged looks and realized the poor teacher had given them a talk because she had obviously heard what Maureen went home to tell her mum. Apparently Maureen had broken her third pair of glasses in one term and did not know how to tell her parents after she saw how upset they were when she broke the ones before. She somehow imagined her parents would believe her story.
While a lot of children tell tales, we must admit that some teachers actually do things that you hope your child tells you about.
Children of a certain age start telling lies and it is often for various reasons. Lying at this age is quite normal. It signifies creativity along with an increase in intellectual functioning. That doesn’t mean that it is an acceptable behavior, but it is helpful to understand why it occurs. It is particularly helpful to parents to realize that their children are in fact developing along normal lines. That said, it is equally important that the opportunity for instruction that is provided by lying be used to further the child’s capacity to think things through.
More recently, a woman confided in me that her almost eight-year-old daughter had begun telling lies. The lies were mostly small in scope, and didn’t seem to be focused on hiding anything in particular. In fact, they seemed mostly like little white lies. When this mother confronted her daughter, the youngster explained that she had noticed that some kids seem to get away with lies. She gave a few examples of other children who had either told a lie at school, or at home, and had seemingly not been caught. Moreover, in some cases these children had gotten away with something because their lies had been taken for the truth. This young daughter was puzzled by all of this seeing that her mother had taken great care to instruct her that lying was unacceptable and never really worked or gained anything in the long run. Clearly, this child was able to see from her own observations that Mom’s admonitions didn’t stand up to experience. So, she had decided to try it out herself and see if she could get away with a lie.
My first reaction was to be impressed by the logic employed by this young girl and her creativity at testing out the hypothesis she had formulated based on her observations. She was in fact perfectly demonstrating a significant change in cognitive capacity (ability to think) that occurs usually around eight years of age. There is a mental leap that allows children to begin to see what experts call the shadings in reality. Things change from being very black and white to incorporating shades of gray. For the child, this means that what they have learned under the tutelage of the parents is now open for testing in the immediate environment. Not only can children remember what the rules are, they know when to apply them and can observe how others apply them. In the case of this youngster, the experiment was simply that. There were no other emotional problems that were instigating her newfound attempts at telling lies. She was doing research based on her new ability to look at things with a more penetrating eye.
I suggested her mother deal with the dilemma about lying in the following way.
First, initiate a conversation about the issue of trust as it is related to lying. In other words, point out that if she lies to her mother, then her mother will begin to question whether or not she can trust what her daughter tells her. If she can’t trust her, then she will not be able to allow some of the privileges that are currently based on that trust.
Secondly, ask the child to think of a situation in which someone has lied to her. How did it feel? What happened? How did it affect her relationship with that person?
This is a good lesson in empathy. Point out that even though someone may think they are getting away with lying, they really are not. By lying they are saying that they can’t be trusted. They are also doing something that can hurt someone else. Moreover, they are potentially damaging their relationships with people that mean something to them. The fact that a lot of people are doing a particular thing (in this case, lying) does not make it right. I told the mother to be sure that throughout the conversation, she made use of very concrete examples the child could understand and relate to, and to construct the interchange in more of a question and answer format rather than a lecture.
Finally, I encouraged her to use a very kind and understanding tone. This is not a situation that calls for punishment, and in fact punishment would defeat the purpose of the lesson.
When finished with this process, it is important to make sure that your youngster understands that lying is not an acceptable activity and let her know she should come and talk to you in the future when she comes across things that do not immediately make sense or seem to be different from what you had taught her.
