The cover story of Feb. 18th’s New York Magazine (no, not the Lindsay Lohan one) is a fascinating look, by writer Po Bronson, on "Learning to Lie."
For all we value honesty, almost all children lie at some point. Bronson postulates that children learn this habit from their parents. They see us lie to telemarketers, lie to be polite when people give inappropriate gifts, lie to avoid conflict, etc. Research shows that fear of punishment does not make children lie less. Rather, they learn to lie less as they learn to think about how other people might feel – in other words, as they become socialized to be empathetic.
To curtail the habit, Bronson recommends making sure that even small lies are noticed, and assuring the child that telling the truth will be better (because you won’t react unreasonably). You should also avoid entrapping kids and putting them in positions to lie unnecessarily. Bronson recounts noticing his 3-and-a-half-year-old daughter scribbling on the dining room table with a washable marker. “Disapprovingly, I asked ‘Did you draw on the table, Thia?’ In the past, she would have answered honestly, but my tone gave away that she’d done something wrong. Immediately, I wished I could retract the question. I should have just reminded her not to write on the table, slipped newspaper under her coloring book, and washed the ink away. Instead, I had done just as [McGill University child development professor Victoria] Talwar had warned against. ‘No, I didn’t,’ my daughter said, lying to me for the first time.”
The article in general is worth a read, but most fascinating for our purposes is the link between intelligence and early lying. “Bright kids – those who do better on other academic indicators – are able to start lying at 2 or 3,” Bronson writes. The article quotes Talwar saying that “lying is related to intelligence.” While truthfulness is a virtue, lying requires skill. As Bronson notes, “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… That 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.”
I’m curious if readers of this blog have found that to be the case. Are gifted toddlers capable of telling very tall tales? How do you stop them?