Just looking for opinions from other parents, or anyone who has been around kids much…
About what age would a fairly typical kid start lying?
And about what age would a fairly typical kid start fabricating entire stories, including direct quotes?
Why I’m asking: my son, who just turned 4, has been telling me things that other people have said to him. He’s quite certain about what was said, and will give me exact quotes three times in a row, but other people are telling me he’s making it up. I’m skeptical that he’s making up entire stories on his own, and keeping them straight, but maybe I’m wrong.
Now, if I ask him, “Did you spill the milk all over the table?” he will say, “No! I didn’t. (pause) Ok, yeah, I did, and I’ll clean it up.” So I think he’s not a very good liar, at all, and he usually 'fesses up to whatever he did within a minute. (“Did you hit your little brother?” “Um, no, well, sorta, I pushed him, and he pushed me, so I hit him. But not hard!”) Which I would expect as typical 4-year-old logic.
The childhood development websites I just looked at said a child isn’t capable of lying until they’re 3 or 4. Since your son has just turned four, he could be capable of it. They also say that a kid that young might not realize that it’s lying to tell you something he’s made up.
Well, of course kids will try to get away with stuff. All kids try to pull the wool over parents eyes. The key is to keep an open and honest relationship with your child. I’m amazed at the stuff my kids tell me. And that’s because I’m available and non-judgemental. I’m not trying to live their lives for them. I tell them repeatedly that they are responsible for their own decisions. Boy, sounds like a Dr. Phil episode… but really if you are honest with your kids they should be honest in return and lying should not be an issue. Kids will pick up on clues from their parents. If you are honest and trustworthy why shouldn’t little Johnny be?
Yup, the above links have done a pretty good job of saying what I was going to say- but if you want a more philosophical link about Child Development and lying and what it means intellectually, I believe the process is called “Theory of Mind”
It’s really neat stuff actually- the Child’s brain and thinking has to develop to the point of where they understand that everything doesn’t revolve around themselves (Egocentrism is lost, and they’re moving on to Piaget’s PreOperational Stage of Development- there are some good/fun tests to put on the kid at this age (like the False Belief test in the above wiki link), and basically it’s the fact that the Child has realized that his thoughts are not the sole thoughts in the world- others have thoughts as well- BUT also that they don’t have access to his thoughts, so he can now start to lie and others will not be able to realize he is lying. Fun stuff.
I say give him the False Belief Test for fun (all you need is a helper and an object or a toy) and see what he does… If he passes it- he’s definitely able to lie.
I work in a preschool/daycare situation with a mixed-age group of three-year-olds through soon-to-be first-graders. In my experience, four-year-olds tell stories. A lot. Some three-year-olds do, too.
I don’t want to call them lies, because I don’t think at 4 a child has anywhere near the same concept of lying as an adult. They aren’t saying what they do with the intent to deceive, but with the intent to alter reality. Many 4YOs think that whatever adults say is true, and they’re trying out the same magic themselves. (If I say that Daddy told me to wear my pretty pink coat out on the playground and not my warm sturdy snowsuit, doesn’t that make it true?) So they stick to their guns even when they are shown evidence that it just isn’t true.
I don’t try to punish children that small for lying/telling stories, but I do tell them that I know their story isn’t correct, and let them see that the story won’t change my behavior.
The oldest kids in our group, however? When they say something that isn’t true, they know they’re lying, and you can see that from their behavior. They also don’t try to get away with it nearly as often as their younger classmates.
When I was four, I told my kindergarten teacher all about my ten dogs. (We lived way out in the country, so it wasn’t implausible.) I had their names and breeds and personalities down pat. When we finally actually got a dog I wanted to bring it to show and tell, and the teacher nervously asked my mom, “Just the one dog, right? She can’t bring all of them.” My mother was a little surprised.
I know a four year old (little sister of a client of mine) who used to tell all kinds of fantastic stories about speaking multiple languages, seeing fairies, having magic powers, etc. I eventually figured out she was doing it for the attention/conflict. Whenever she would say something like, “I can talk to fairies, you know!” the adults around her would contradict her, express skepticism, etc.
I started adopting an air of polite neutrality to her stories: “Oh, really? Hm.” She stopped telling tall tales almost immediately in favor of stories that had actually happened (such as what she did on a playdate), because I would express more interest in stories that were true.
I teach second grade, and lying is one of my bugbears. Early this year I made an example of a couple of kids that I suspected (rightly) of lying to me, and since then, when a kid makes an initial lie to me, I put on my meanest face and say, “In a minute, I’m going to ask you again. You get one chance to tell me the truth.” If they fess up, I issue whatever punishment is appropriate (generally having to walk laps at recess or something, but sometimes nothing more than a reminder of the rules), but explain what horrible fate, e.g., a call home, would have resulted had they lied. If they don’t fess up, I make life miserable for them–total loss of recess freedom, call home, office referral, whatever’s appropriate.
I read somewhere that around second grade is when kids really start to grasp that adults are not omniscient and all-powerful, and it’s when they start testing to discover the boundaries of adult ignorance. It’s a natural process, and I appreciate why they do it, but good god it’s irritating, and unless I can convince them that my ignorance is a lot less than it really is, it’s very hard to do my job.
Fortunately, they’re often shitty liars. This week a girl’s Nutrigrain bar disappeared from her desk. I asked the class if anyone had seen it. One boy, wide-eyed, blurted out, “I didn’t take it!” as he hid his hands in his desk.
That’s very sad; 4-year-olds should invent languages and play with fairies and move the world to their whims.
But about kids and lies:
I heard * that lying is an important part of a child’s intellectual development; that it is not a result of the new awareness of self & other, consequences to actions, etc. but a very important stage in learning to learn. I believe the conclusion was the if a child doesn’t lie (reasonably well; not like the typical four y.o.) between eight and eleven, the parents should worry. A lot.
[There was no suggestion the parents should just accept the lies, just that parents should not believe their children Satan-spawn when they start to lie.]
The report implied that children are not effective liars until between eight & eleven.
This is one of those things I heard on some interview on some local show on 'NPR about some recent research … I don’t remember any details.
Ok, that made me laugh, and my kids are usually terrible liars, so I can always catch something like that.
My kid was telling me stories about what certain people had said about me, and I thought these stories were too sophisticated for him to make up, yet too unbelievable that these people were saying such things to my 4-year-old.
It turns out, he wasn’t lying at all. A credible adult overheard these conversations, and my kid didn’t make up a single thing. Now there’s a whole other can of worms opened up, but at least my son isn’t some pathological liar. Even though he still might not admit that he spilled the milk, right away.
Without going into unnecessary detail, a lot a critical and derisive remarks about my weight, my appearance, my hair, my cooking, and my parenting. (Not quite the sort of thing I would expect my kid to come up with, on his own, as he seems to thinks I’m a pretty good mom and cook.)
But he does seem to repeat what he hears, with amazing accuracy. While I’m not pleased to hear what’s being said to my son behind my back, at least I know what’s going on now, so we can address the situation and the people involved.
I agree with flodnak about four-year-olds not being able to tell lies, but merely describing the world they wish was happening. That said, telling the truth is the most important thing in our house.
When kdeus-1 and kdeus-2 were little, we told stories that were either “100% true” or “made up.” Both are good and interesting and valuable, and once kids know its OK to make up stories, they’ll tell you about the time they rode a unicorn. But I would like to know if Mommy actually said it was ok to have pumpkin pie for breakfast, because I want some, too.
I remember about 4 or 5 being the age at which “So, what did you do today while I was at work?” could receive an accurate answer. Before then, my daughter seemed unable to distinguish between memory and imagination. She’d answer “we went to the zoo/museum/children’s farm/Granny’s house”/whatever place she’d been really wanting to go recently. Whether she had actually been to these places was entirely irrelevant.
Intent (or ability) to deceive seemed to be entirely missing from these stories. She simply reported what she wanted to have happened. Even the more standard “it was someone else who scribbled on the walls” type statements seemed to be more her saying what she wanted to be true, and she certainly wasn’t any good at deliberately constructing a lie (“So. It was your sister who did it, was it? The same sister who’s been taking an afternoon nap for the last three hours?”)
IME it seems to me that kids learn to use deceptive facial expressions long before 4: the intent is probably not to deceive, per se, but they learn which expression various adults are most likely to be sympathetic or attracted to, and they pull out that expression as called for–i.e., if whining and puppy-dog eyes work on grandma, they figure that out at 2. I have no idea what the expert opinion is on this. Has anyone else had similar experiences?
Sure, my 2-year-old looks innocent as can be, even while his hands are in the cookie jar! He’s guileless, and just assumes that he can get away with anything because he’s so cute.
My 4-year-old, it turns out, hasn’t been lying about these certain situations. And while he occasionally pulls the “cute” factor to get out of trouble, and makes up stories about monsters in the closet, he’s fairly honest, I now think.
Should we help you come up with some pithy remarks about scrawny, knock-kneed, anorexic, anal-retentive and androgynous busybodies, who are too busy chasing after the latest fashion in hair and dress to learn to so much as boil water, never mind feed their kids?
I admit, I’m kind of fat, and I have some gray hair, and I rarely bother with makeup or fashion. But if I’m such a bad cook, why am I (and my husband) so fat? And if I’m such a bad mom, why are my boys so happy?
One person who has been saying such things seems to have no problem whatsoever eating the food that I cook every day. She also seems to have no problem “borrowing” what little I do own in the way of beauty supplies.
God, this thread reminds me of grade school when a group of kids used to find it hilarious to all tell one story pitting their matching stories against me, so the teacher would always decide I was lying no matter what evidence there was to the contrary; I don’t know how the hell I supposedly put all those bruises on my own back among other things. It quickly taught me that authority was going to be of no help at all no matter how bad things got, and things did get just about as bad as they could without someone dying.
MissGypsy, I am glad you found you could believe your son. It is a damn lonely thing for a child to not have anyone who trusts them.
