The chip and the block

Jun 18, 2008 Editorial

Most of our children are in school taking their end-of-term exams or sitting their CSECs; bearing our private and public hopes as we make all sorts of sacrifices to educate them.

But, as we watched them grow, there has been an almost universal development that is quite discomfiting to all parents: these once so innocent babes in arms learn to lie. “How does this happen? Was this part of their “education”?

Individually, we know that children lie for a legion of reasons — to avoid punishment, to get closer with their peers, to gain a sense of control. But now, from studies by several teams of North American investigators, an interesting theory has emerged for one way this habit develops that may be of interest to us: they are merely copying their parents.

For two decades, parents have rated “honesty” as the trait they most wanted in their children. Other traits, such as confidence or good judgment, don’t even come close. On paper, the kids are getting this message.

In surveys, 98 percent said that trust and honesty were essential in a personal relationship. Depending on their ages, 96 to 98 percent said lying is morally wrong. So when do the 98 percent who think lying is wrong become the 98 percent who lie?

It starts very young. Indeed, bright kids — those who do better on other academic indicators — are able to start lying at two or three. “Lying is related to intelligence,” according to one Canadian expert.

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. We should perhaps watch that bright kid a little closer.

By the time a child reaches school age, the reasons for lying become more complex. Avoiding punishment is still a primary catalyst for lying, but lying also becomes a way to increase a child’s power and sense of control — by manipulating friends with teasing, by bragging to assert status, and by learning he can fool his parents.

Thrown into elementary school, many kids begin lying to their peers as a coping mechanism, as a way to vent frustration or get attention. Any sudden spate of lying, or dramatic increase in lying, is a danger sign: something has changed in that child’s life in a way that troubles him. Lying is a symptom—often of a bigger problem behaviour. We ought to check what is behind the big whoppers.

The most disturbing reason children lie is that parents teach them to. We do not explicitly tell them to lie, but they see us do it. They see us tell the neighbour whose get-together we avoided: “We were not at home.” They see us boast and lie to smooth social relationships. Consider how we expect a child to act when he opens a gift he or she does not like.

We instruct him to swallow all his honest reactions and put on a polite smile. We usually cheer when our children come up with the white lie. “Often, the parents are proud that their kids are ‘polite’ — they don’t see it as lying,” the expert noted. She’s regularly amazed at parents’ seeming inability to recognize that white lies are still lies.

When adults are asked to keep diaries of their own lies, they admit to about one lie per every five social interactions, which works out to one per day, on average. The vast majority of these lies are white lies, lies to protect one’s self or others.

Encouraged to tell so many white lies, and hearing so many others, children gradually get comfortable with being disingenuous. Insincerity becomes, literally, a daily occurrence.

They learn that honesty only creates conflict, and dishonesty is an easy way to avoid conflict. And while they don’t confuse white-lie situations with lying to cover their misdeeds, they bring this emotional groundwork from one circumstance to the other. It becomes easier, psychologically, to lie to a parent.

So, as we reflect on the education our children are receiving in our schools, we ought to reflect on the education they are receiving from us about a value that we all hold dear — the willingness to tell the truth. The chip, evidently, really does not fall far from the block.

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