Teaching Our Children to Lie
by People say that "honesty is the best policy". Parents claim to teach their children to tell the truth, but we live in a society where the ability to convince others of untruths is necessary for success. How does this happen?
What about sales? It doesn’t matter whether you are a salesperson selling a product, a job applicant selling a potential employer on your own employability, a corporate representative trying to get a potential investor to sign a contract, or simply trying to convince another person that your fish story is true, most people enlarge and elaborate their words. Just a slight enhancement can make a huge difference in whether or not the other person responds in the way we want. Usually, the extra embellishment pushes the other person more in our favor. We lie to get a reward.
Which person (or people) do you not get along with, but be nice to for social reasons? I think almost all of us have at least one such person in our lives. The annoying spouse of your good friend, the great-aunt that’s too overbearing, even your supervisor at work can all be examples of this person. It would offend someone that is important to you to show your true opinion. It would cause more stress to speak up than remain silent. Expressing displeasure or disagreement could cost you many of the things you need or want in life. Each of these unpleasant results are a type of punishment for not behaving in the expected way. We lie to avoid punishment.
Image by San Jose Library via Flickr
Parents teach their children to lie.
How many times has a child been told to apologize for something before they are truly sorry for what they did? How many times do children receive no punishment because they give some other excuse for what they have done wrong? How many times do we tell our children to “be nice” when they do not like a friend or relative or classmate? How many times do we admonish our children for “being rude” when they are voicing their honest opinions?
We lie in front of them. Even those “little white lies” are lies. We teach them to be polite and often, to be polite, they have to lie. We change their words, but not their opinions, when we force them to say the correct words. When we tell them to “say it again and mean it”, we teach them to control their facial expressions and voice inflection as well as their words when they lie. What we achieve is not the changed attitude, but instead, a more carefully crafted lie.
Children are not stupid. They see more than what most adults will give them credit. By the time a child is an adult, they will have witnessed just about every possible role model in their life telling some type of lie. Everyone jokes about the lies of politicians, but we encourage our children to be governors or senators or presidents. Those in professional sports are caught in lies that are dragged through the news with only a slight “hand slap” and maybe a fine and apology required of the perpetrators. Every time a child witnesses the exchanges between their parents or other relatives and unappreciated outside individuals where excuses are made, they witness a good result from a lie.
Image by Tony the Misfit via Flickr
The consequences of the truth.
Those who tell the truth at the wrong times find their lives made very difficult in this society. Giving the “wrong” response to a simple greeting can cause people to not want to talk to you. Disagreeing instead of agreeing with a supervisor can cause you to lose your job. Standing up to Great Aunt Louise may cause your entire family to turn on you with disapproval. Those who do not learn to “just smile and nod” implying understanding and/or agreement when none exists find themselves stuck without the necessary connections that make keeping friends, family, employment, and general success possible. Those who tell only the truth may be respected in some circles, but often there are unwanted consequences, losing something they want very badly, causing pain to those around them, or even being seen as “grumpy” or “antisocial”.
The bottom line.
Certain types of lying are required in order to get along in society. We teach our children this behavior by example from the time they are very young. The niceties of white lies have become so ingrained in our society that it is necessary to use them to keep up appearances. Regardless of whether we intend it or not, these “small lies” witnessed by our children encourage them to make “larger” lies as well. The key to the success of our children may not be teaching them to tell the truth, but teaching them when and how it is expected that they will lie and when and how they should not.
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