To think we shouldn't habitually lie to children?

[mossylog]

I've got a toddler who wanted some more chips. My mum was staying for dinner and she said "there's none left" to encourage him to eat more vegetables on his plate— there were a bunch left, which my son could have seen for himself if he'd looked carefully. I didn't make a deal of it at the time, but it annoyed me.

Lying to manipulate your child into desired behaviour seems bad to me. Parents who say "the batteries are dead" when they don't children to watch TV, it's just conflict avoidant and eventually erodes trust.

This isn't just about the chips, my mum tells constant inconsequential lies constantly. Pretending she's heard of something you're talking about, or that she's been to a place she hasn't. Never admitting ignorance, always wanting to seem informed. The upshot is, she gets on with every stranger she meets straight away, but I can't trust half the things she says.

YABU: white lies for social convenience are fine, everyone does it, or maybe it's fine when it's done to small children for an easy life.

YANBU: we should model being honest to children and we should avoid bullshitting

We don't pretend Father Christmas is real. I get sick to death of parents obsessed over 'Christmas magic' – Christmas is magic regardless, and if it isn't then you're doing Christmas wrong.

This feels so worthy and earnest.

Please just tell your child their drawing is good and leave it at that.

I’ve never lied unless it’s to protect them (someone didn’t buy them a present or didn’t turn up for a play date or something). Always been 100% honest. Imagine the person you trust the most lying to you

Totally agree - we shouldn't do it. It's lazy and the lies are often moronic.

Kids know when they're being lied to. They're so attuned, what they might imagine could be much worse than just being told the truth.

This is an older generation thing for sure. I'm sure no harm is going to come over someone saying there's no batteries in a remote but it's just lazy. I'd just tell the truth and if they didn't stop going on about it I'd then say stop or x,y,z will happen. It's not difficult.

And the example above of being evasive if a young child asks what viagra is - this just teaches them that mum isn’t going to answer ‘embarrassing’ questions honestly so you might as well not ask her. This won’t be good when they’re older and need to know these things. They’ll turn to the internet or the random misinformed kid at school instead.

If they were really really young a simple answer would be ‘it’s a medicine older people take.’ When my 6 year old asked, I just told her it’s a medicine for men that allows them to have sex when they can’t naturally.’ Totally fine, she accepted it.

Actually - there was omission of truth regards Santa and those annoying elves.

When my son figured it out he asked if they were real or was I doing it ( age 9). I just told the truth then.

This is such a good try at a post! I like how you've structured the sentences. I'm not so keen on the suggestion but it's great that you made it!

😜

Yep, I think this is a touchy subject for you because of your mum. I feel similarly and have tried very hard to never outright lie to my children (unless they know I'm joking). My mum could put on the fakest persona with other people and it drove me batty. I don't want to be like her. I want to be honest.

Agreed

Exactly.

Reasoning with a 2 year old is a waste of everyone's energy.
You are the parent and you make the rules. Often, when they are going through certain stages, it is best to take the easiest route through to bedtime.

Exactly.
"Lying" as you put it covers a whole range of situations.

If i had a young kid who always had heavy meltdowns, then i might tell a white lie every now and then. Because a lie isn’t fantastic, but it is better then a meltdown.

When my grandmother had dementia, she would become so sad and angry when we went home after a visit, so we told her we just went to get some groceries and be right back. And she would let us leave and then forget all about it. It wasn’t great, but we did it for her own benefit.

I asked my mum how FC manages to get all round the world in one evening and she told me he doesn't, and that she & Dad bought the presents. I suppose there's lying ... and lying! To be fair, FC is the first lie we tell our dch and I was never totally comfortable with it.

Meh, I lie to my 2yo all the time. She is absolutely wonderful but is not really there yet on understanding why she can't have 3 lollipops.

I don't lie to my 5yo except for Xmas and the tooth fairy. He is in hospital more than the average child, and appreciates my honesty about when things will hurt a little bit, etc. As a result, he trusts me. He does not appreciate his lying new swimming teacher who promised not to let go and did.

That answer wasn't 'evasive', it was age appropriate. Explaining erectile dysfunction needs a reasonable knowledge of the male sexual reproductive system, which a younger child will probably not actually have yet.
Also, people don't have to be 'older' to need Viagra. Erectile dysfunction can happen at any age.

Not lying doesn't always equate to reasoning though.
You're not having more chips because you've already had enough chips for today/this week. There will be more chips another day but not today.

Despite your mother’s habitual lying you have grown into an honest person who hates lies - so you turned out ok. Go figure.

You learn it the hard way though - losing some friends on the way.

Sorry I haven’t RTFT but I agree OP, I was very gullible as a child and took everything my DM said seriously (and repeated everything to peers). Growing up and realising most things she’s told me are complete lies made me feel so embarrassed. I’d preached to so many other children I bet they thought I was a complete idiot. I hate seeing people from school because I dread to think the stupid things I parroted to them from my parents. The odd white lie is ok, constant lies to children are not ok.

I think the question you have to ask yourself before telling a lie is: "will this lie matter in ten years' time?". It probably also depends how good your child is at remembering things. I was a bit too good at quoting people word for word, which embarrassed my parents sometimes. :)

For example, lying that you've run out of chips: not very important.
The lie "our dog has gone to live on a farm": very significant indeed!

There's also the difference between lying about facts, and opinions. Of course we lie about opinions, all the time, out of tactfulness. Lying about facts is more clear cut. I think this difference can be taught to children.

I had a very combative toddler, if I hadn't avoided some conflict (IE told her there were no more chips) I'd have spent the whole of 2017-2019 arguing with a headstrong and defiant child 😂

Agree with you about the weight of the lie. When I was in primary school I was told my uncles funeral was the next day, so I trotted off to school. Transpired that it was actually that day, my parents thought I was too young to go so they lied to me so I would go to school without making a fuss. I felt so betrayed, and was doubly sad that I didn't get the chance to say goodbye. Sat with me for a long while that one.

My family on the whole have a very casual relationship with the truth. It wasn't till I went to university and met people with a stronger moral compass than I realised that wasn't the same for all people and that many people are extremely honest. Which is how I prefer to be as a rule! Not least because lying is way too much effort, how do you keep track of everything you've said?!

Yeah, anyone who says they don't lie to kids is, well, a liar.

An example of a lie of little importance:

When I was seven years old, my mum demanded that I put six Lego knights together, because "they should be kept complete", not in individual pieces. It turned out that this was so she could put them on my brother's castle birthday cake. I remember saying at the time that she had lied about why she wanted me to put them together, and was probably briefly annoyed with her for "lying" at the time, to say nothing of my Lego men having their feet dirtied by icing; however, even then, I knew this was a matter of no importance.

This is a fascinating thing: how much truth do you tell children? For example, the big lie that the Railway Children's mother tells them, which she had to think of quickly: "Father's been called away on business." It was only by accident that Bobbie finds out the truth.

Also, I found out some ways my parents had lied by omission, for very good reasons. There was a massive plan my parents made when I was six which never came to fruition: moving to another city. They had got someone else to look after me for an overnight stay while they checked out the house we might have moved to. In the end, this move never happened, and I didn't find out about it until many years later. Should I have been offended? My parents also spared me the knowledge of what some teenage helpers got up to together on an overnight youth group trip I was on (again, when I was six), although they told me about it some years later.

I have to confess - I lied to my kids all the time when they were little. “My crisps are spicy you won’t like them” “the ice cream van is sold out” “you can’t buy them sweet's they’re just for display” “TVs broken you can’t watch”

If I was doing it all again now, I’d like to think I’d be very reasonable and explain things to my kids- but sometimes harmless lying just makes life easier.

Even now sometimes I think of little lies my parents told me as a child, and think Oh! that’s why they said that! For example, the other day I remembered how my mum used to say people’s tongues turned blue when they lied and it only just occurred to me that she said it because I’d hide my tongue if I was lying!