"Babies lie from the age of six months"

[emkana]

www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/07/01/scibaby101.xml

Utter rubbish if you ask me. Just because an adult decided there's "nothing wrong" when a baby calls for his/her mother, doesn't mean that the baby is lying!

well, it is the torygraph....

Huh?

What a crock!

it's a BABY.

The root of most of this society's ills is that people are taught not to listen to themselves, their bodies, their minds and their hearts.

And it starts right there in teh cradle.

Don't want your life compromised? Want an easy time of it?

Don't have kids!

Rubbish.

Chances are baby just wanted attention, or simply a cuddle.

Sample of 50 children, only The article doesn't really explain how the children of 6 months old are lying. DD is 8 months old and I struggle to see how she would be capable of concealing something from me or fake crying.

Maybe 6 month olds cry because it is the ONLY FUCKING NOISE THEY CAN MAKE LOUDLY ENOUGH TO GET SOMEONE TO COME AND PLAY WITH THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'd love to know a) what did she work out for her doctorate and b) who thinks she is a behavioural expert~!!!!

FFS.

sorry for rant

I think she's misunderstood the nature of crying, tbh. IMO a baby crying is communicating in the only way it knows. Could be saying 'I'm hungry' or 'I need a cuddle' or any one of a hundred different things. Doesn't make the baby deceptive.

In the immortal words of my dad, 'Of course they cry! They can't talk!'

found a quote from her:

"They use it [crying] to get their parents' attention even when they are not in the distress their crying would suggest. You can tell because they will cry, then pause while they listen to see if their mother is responding before crying again."

so that would be "fake" crying rather than saying "please mama, I can see you are busy, but would you mind providing a little milk", because ofcourse they are all capable of doing that.

wtf?

Maybe I'm being dim, but how do you know that a six month old baby is pretending to cry or faking a laugh? Surely they're just laughing or crying?

Still the study was of more than 50 children, so what do I know?

Agree with Edam.

Also babies learn that laughing gets a positive reaction. Its a social skill rather than lying.

Child of our TIme did something on learning to lie. I think they said it starts at around 3 and that it is learning to tell things other than they are (developing imagination) rather than trying to deceive). And is a good thing developmentally.

Babies cry to communicate - not necessarily to say they are in pain, wet, need feeding.

IMO that's not lying, littlelapin, he's looking for a cue from you how to handle the situation.

Dont' we all constantly lie? Like when we smile and say "hello" to someone we can't stand, when we'd rather say, "not you again!"

As expat pointed out, babies cry because they can't talk. My DD pretends to cry everyday, when I won't let her have her own way. She just doesn't have the vocab to have an argument with me.

It's so sweet when they fall over/bang themselves and then look at you to see how you react and take their cue..DD has been doing this since she was tiny. It shows so much how their little minds work, and how utterly they depend on you for reassurance.

btw I don't mean it's sweet when they fall over..oh you know what i mean..

same headline in the Mail
it really fecking annoyed me
as it happens

I don't believe for a moment that a six month baby can lie but all children need to learn to lie. It's an essential social skill. Obviously they need to be taught that 'bad' lying (denying they've done something naughty, blaming someone else, etc) is wrong but civilised society wouldn't function without white lies to prevent causing offence or to defuse aggressive situations. If those babies in the study really were lying, they were just learning a required human communication skill!

DH and I realised the other day that DD was lying to us.
She was hiding her teddy under a blanket and telling us he was gone. I was furious

At least I know it is normal

What a lot of cobblers.

eeeeeevil little monsters making noises to distract us from other things and cuddle them!! Oh the horror!

My 2.5 year old lies! I found that out yesterday after he told dh that Mummy had dropped her coffee mug and broken it and that that was bad thing for her to do. Actually we were at the supermarket and ds pulled a jar of instant coffee off of the shelf and it smashed in the aisle. I had to tell a member of the staff so that noone would get injured on the broken glass. Hmmmm. Still I like to think it was just an active imagination...

Not sure about infant liars though. Sounds a little unlikely if you ask me. Didn't that Robert Winston tv show (Child of our Time, I think) discuss the age at which a child will wilfully carry out an act after being told not to, and then lie about it? I seem to remember that it was definitely a development during toddlerhood rather than babyhood during his experiment.

What a joke!

Almost as hilarious as when MIL told me that DS1 was watching me out of the corner of his eye as he cried to see what I was doing.

He was 4 weeks old. Not to mention 5 weeks premature.

now a baby lying utter tosh but my 2.8yo can and does lie, she told grandad that we went to tescos and left the baby at home when ds was about 6weeks old, she was 2.1yo at the time. but she knew this would cause a reaction and a bad reaction at that. obv my dad didnt believe her but some people would have done.

she tells me keiran made the mess with her toys (when hes fast asleep in bed)

she tells me it was the kitten who spilt her juice (when hes sat next to me)

it is a life skill and obviously needs to be learnt at some stage, 6months is ridiculous but i also think that thinking they dont know how to lie until 4yo is ridiculous too

LaHobeme my dd does that, we've taken to laughing when she falls over so she doesnt go straight into drama queen mode! she was in the creche the other day and fell and banged her nose.....the staff pulled me aside afterwards and said 'we'r not really sure how to react bt she fell over got up and laughed, we thought it was a bit odd'! i couldnt help but lol

I can't understand how a 6mth could, dd is 3 1/2 had still cant lie.

For example dh run her a bath the other night, with no bubbles. When he went to get her out after 30 mins asked her where the bubbles had come from. Her answer was "she didn't know about the shampoo only the toys".

I think it might be awhile before she get the hang of lying.