Kids lie early, often and for all sorts of reasons, to avoid punishment, to bond with friends, to gain a sense of control. But now there’s a singular theory as to how this habit develops: They are just copying their parents. The teens lie about what they spend their money on, and whether they’d started dating, and what clothes they put on away from the house. They lie about what movie they went to, and whom they went with. They lie about alcohol and drug use, and they lie about whether they were hanging out with friends their parents disapproved of. They lie about how they spent their afternoons while their parents were at work.
A child who is going to lie must recognise 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. By their 4th birthday, almost all kids will start experimenting with lying in order to avoid punishment. Most parents hear their child lie and assume he’s too young to understand what lies are or that lying is wrong. They presume their child will stop when he gets older and learns those distinctions. In studies where children are observed in their natural environment, a 4-year-old will lie once every two hours, while a 6-year-old will lie about once every hour and a half. Few kids are exceptions. 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.
FAYEZA ANUM
Lahore
