Post | Bay Area Discovery Museum

Online Book Club: NurtureShock Chapter 4: Why Kids Lie

Welcome to the fourth installment of our Online Book Club, featuring NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. Everyone is welcome to join in at any time, either here or on our Facebook page. We’ll cover the 10 chapters one at a time over the next few weeks. We welcome your thoughts and personal experiences in the comments. If you have a question you’d like to ask of the authors, either include it in the comments or email Jennifer at jcaleshu(at)badm.org and she’ll pass it along.

Chapter 4: Why Kids Lie. We may treasure honesty, but the research is clear. Most classic strategies to promote truthfulness just encourage kids to be better liars.

While there are parenting implications of this chapter, I am most struck with the opening about how adults are absolutely no good at determining if a child is lying. To me, this is much more interesting a problem for society than trying to figure out if my particular children lie, and how to get them to tell the truth. Of course, I don't yet have a teenager, and my 4-year-old is just starting to test out his ability to lie - so check back with me in a few years and see if I care more then!

But I guess I'm not surprised by the research that all children lie - I am surprised that it seems there is no expertise for determining the truth, especially in cases where it counts. Fitting this in with the research I've read about the unreliability of eyewitness accounts paints a pretty uncomfortable picture about our justice system.

But I digress - as I mentioned, my 4-year-old is testing his ability to lie, so it is helpful to read about how to instill the value of honesty, while recognizing that lying can actually be a positive part of development (within reason!). And I will definitely try the offer of "both immunity and a clear route back to good standing" as a way to ferret out the truth. And while I've somewhat blown off the attempts to lie, I also appreciate the research that early parental reactions to lying set the stage for the future, like most things in parenting, so it is important to figure out the right response to lying to lead to that value of honesty.

Incidentally, I was shocked by the research that parents are ten times more liekly to chastise a child for tattling than for lying - I really want my kids to learn to solve their own problems, but I want to be a resource to help when the problems are bigger.

What do you think? Do your kids lie? How do you handle it? How can you set the stage for honesty when the stakes are bigger than "Did you brush your teeth?" Join the conversation in the comments or on Facebook.

This entry was posted on 11/23/09 and is filed under Jennifer Caleshu.
Tagged: book club

<< Back to Blog