Children as Eyewitnesses

Children, like most people, have the ability to tell stories.  Some children are better storytellers then others.  The best storytellers can recite events with vivid detail and earnestness.  Often children claim to remember an event that never happened.  Most people that spend any amount of time around children can remember a story a child told that never occurred. While cute and humorous, the false memory of children can lead to a person being arrested for a crime they never committed.  Many people each year can be falsely convicted of child molestation and other child sex crimes by faulty accounts of children. Do children make up events and then claim they are real? Most of the time a child’s memory is very accurate, but it can be changed with questioning (Myers 298). Indirect questions and questions that stretch beyond a child’s vocabulary and language understanding most often start the false information trend (Ceci 4). When young children began to relate false information over and over, it soon becomes reality to them (Myers 298). With false information children can construct stories that to them seem real, but never happened (Myers 298).

All children love toy stores and Anna was no different.  The thrill of strolling through a isle after a isle of shiny new and exciting trinkets is among the highest pleasures of children. Most children can sit for hours and stare at all the toys they dream of owning. Anna was one of these children. If she could choose to go somewhere, it was the toy-store. Once in the store, Anna would start looking for unique items. When she found something that touched her fancy, Anna would run to show her mother and siblings. Then she would put it back and start the hunt for another trinket. One day Anna came to her family with a board game in her hands and stated matter-of-factly that, “I liked to play this game when I was a big kid.” This comment produced great amusement from the rest of her family. Every few trips to the toy store, Anna would come forward with a new game and claim to have played it before. Each time Anna came with a new game, her mother and siblings found it just as humorous as the first occurrence. 

As time went on, Anna’s siblings found that things they said affected the stories she told about things she thought she had done. In the store Anna would pick up a game and her siblings would ask her if she had played it before. Anna would think for a minute then go tell her mother how she remembered liking the game. Later, Anna’s sibling found that asking her where she had played the game produced a place and names. For example, Anna would pick up a game she had never seen before, and when asked if she had played, it she would answer, yes. When asked where she would answer, “At so and so’s house.” Taking the questions further, Anna’s siblings soon started asking how the games were played and the dates she had played them on. To these prompts Anna always had an answer. For years, I never thought much of the stories my siblings and I received from Anna. Never did it cross my mind that our questions had any effect on the stories. Now I realize that the questions could have helped create the stories Anna told.