Woman's Hour - Parenting: Why do children lie?

Episode Date: January 16, 2020

Young children may know they can deceive others but their first lies are often more humorous than effective. Imagine the child who claims not to have eaten any cake while her mouth is still full, or who blames the family dog for drawing on the wall. But is lying actually an important sign other cognitive skills are also developing? As a child matures how does the nature and motivation behind lying change? And is it ever a cause for concern? In this week's Woman's Hour Parenting Podcast, Jenni Murray speaks to consultant child and educational psychologist, Laverne Antrobus.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello, this is Jenny Murray welcoming you to this week's Podcast for Parents. Now, we put a picture on Twitter recently which made us laugh and I'm sure it amused you too. It was sent to us by Crystal and it shows her son, then aged two and a half, wearing a red sweater looking absolutely angelic with something bright red all over his face. She asks, have you been playing with my lipstick, Ralph? He replies, no. The evidence of the untruth is clear. Why do children tell lies?

What do we learn about the development of their cognitive skills from their ability to tell fibs? And if it continues as they get older, how worried should a parent be? Well, Laverne Antrobus is a consultant child and educational psychologist. Laverne, why would a child lie in the face of obvious evidence of a misdemeanor? He had been playing with the lipstick. He absolutely had been playing with the lipstick. But what's so delightful is that in his mind, he thought he could carry through an idea that, you know, was his own. But the evidence was there. And I think this is what's so fantastic about children lying.

I mean, it is quite an ordinary developmental stage. That's what we've got to remember. And as you've said, it starts to give us some clues about how children understand their own thinking and the thinking of others. So in his mind, Mummy couldn't see that he had this lipstick on and he was going to keep this as a secret for himself. What's going on when, for example, a teacher asks a parent whether they'd enjoyed their weekend in Italy? They hadn't actually been away.

The child had put it in their newsbook. Well, I mean, show and tell, tell us your news is one of those situations I remember as a teacher. And children will tell a fib or a lie because they're a bit bored. They want a bit of stimulation and actually they're experimenting. They want to see what happens if they do say the things that are in their mind. So I think for that teacher and the parent, you know, they have to start to sort of uncouple, you know, what's going on for the child that they felt in that moment. Yeah, I don't want to talk about just playing basketball in the park. We went to Italy. But what's the best way to handle fibs like that, which I suspect are not

uncommon? I remember my mother going to a beetle drive in my school and being told oh you've recovered quickly and my mother said recovered quickly from what and they said oh we thought you had a baby boy yesterday. I had made up a baby brother and I think I was punished quite severely for it. I mean I think there's a sort of there's an interesting line between imagination and a wish and a want for something and lying. And that actually what parents and adults have to do is try and sort of work out the distance between those two things. I think children often taking risks when they're lying. They want to see, as I've said, what happens, whether or not they're

discovered. But also, you know, just to test out theories as to what's going on. I'm not sure that there needs to be sort of massive consequences and punishments for lies such as that, but there have to be sort of measured and understood conversations about why lying does create problems. What's happening when children tell lies about their friends or their siblings deliberately to get them into trouble? I think again there's a sort of huge for me there's a huge tapestry of emotions behind lying you know often people lie if they have cross if they're feeling angry or fearful or guilty or jealous or envious. So, you know, I can remember hearing children say things about friends and friendships in the playground that were completely sort of

fantastical. And I think, well, why are you saying that? And there'd often be something behind it. You know, they themselves, the individual might be feeling a bit sort of unconfident or self-conscious and wanting to create something about themselves create a story about themselves that makes them feel good so i think that there is a way in which parents and adults have to look at you know what's behind the lie you know and and sort of uncover it for themselves and then talk to their child about it so as a teacher how would you have handled that sort of thing if it had come to life i I think I would have said, well, this doesn't seem, you know, to sort of follow through. I don't understand this.

And to give children quite a lot of time to sort of recalibrate slightly, you know, to not feel that they've got to continue the lie, that they can save face, I suppose, by being truthful. And that actually, as a teacher, I valued the truth. I understood the motivation for wanting things to seem, you know, different, but that actually my value was placed on them being quite honest. We've been talking mostly about younger children, I think. I mean, the lipstick guy was only two and a half, to be forgiven, absolutely, obviously. What are teenagers most likely to lie about? I think teenagers, you know, for them, it's a really tricky moment in time. Actually, again, developmentally quite important. You know, they're wanting to be quite separate. They're not wanting parents or adults to be in their business. You know, they want to be able to be out there

exploring and doing the things in the way that they want to. And I think why it's tricky is because, you know, so if we take, for example, going out partying and drinking, you know, there are lots of sort of rules that go with that, which is that, you know, don't drink too much and you're underage. So there are some sort of ordinary consequences with that. How you then talk to your parents about it is quite complex. You know, how do you really say, oh, well, mum, dad, you know, I did have a bit too much to drink. Can you pick me up? When you know that your parents are going to be saying, well, you shouldn't be drinking. But how do children judge the morality of the lie? You know, they're told always you must tell the truth, but they know perfectly well that their dad has a sneaky cigarette from time to time

and claims to have quit and always denies he's had one. Yeah, and that's the litmus test, isn't it, really? You know, how do you create a household where actually the truths are real and the lies are the ones that we all know about? I think that there's a way in which lying becomes, you know, in this in-between space of not hurting someone's feelings or, you know, looking after people. So, you know, granny that's knitted you something that you absolutely hate, you might, your parent might say, well, just say you like it because you don't want to hurt their feeling. So there's a sort of this line of lying whereby, you know, what's the moral high ground? What do we have to absolutely say? Actually, no, that tips the bar and we'll have X amounts of consequences going with it. And what is lesser that we can talk about as a family? At what point does it become a

cause for concern? I think when things do become quite dangerous when there's that really consistent and persistent lying from children I mean sometimes I think children that I've encountered you know are lying almost without thinking so they sort of have a instant response to saying no it wasn't me before they've even had a chance to think about it. And I also think that sort of situations where consequences are quite punitive or quite harsh, often lead to quite persistent lying, because what children start to learn is that, you know, it's going to be better for me to tell a lie to try and get out of the harsh punishment that might be coming my way. There have been studies, haven't there, looking at the effects

of punitive responses. Is that what the studies tell us, that the harder you punish, the more likely your child is to consistently tell a lie? Well, I think it's a really helpful framework to have in your mind as a parent, because if you hold this line where you say, actually, what I want from you, darling, is that, you know, you always tell me the truth and I will honour that. Your child then tells you the truth, but you still dish out quite a harsh consequence. That doesn't make sense. So I think we've got to be really careful, both in schools and at home, to be saying we're going to try and separate these things out. We're going to have a consequence for the behaviour that's attributed to the lying, but we're going to talk about the lie.

So, yes, I absolutely do think that children who get themselves into quite a lot of difficulty with lying are trying to resist and avoid quite a harsh consequence. So if you are concerned about a child and you think they are seriously lying what should you do? I think you've got to demonstrate it from it's always for me demonstrated by how parents behave and how adults behave I think you've got to be quite upfront about your own lying you know and what what you do and also you have to really start early and say in this, we really do value honesty. We are going to take up the issues around behaviour. But if you tell me the truth, then we can talk about why that's going on.

And that's when I think you get an insight into, as I've said, that sort of rich tapestry of emotions around, you know, how a child is feeling that might be leading to these lies. Levan Antrobus, thank you very much indeed for being with us. And we would like to hear from you if you have stories about, you know, lies where you knew they were lying, but you didn't mind doing what to do. Let us know on Twitter or email. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know.

It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.