Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Are We Teaching Our Children to Lie?

From Albert Mohler
The most disturbing reason children lie is that parents teach them to. According to Talwar, they learn it from us. "We don't explicitly tell them to lie, but they see us do it. They see us tell the telemarketer, 'I'm just a guest here.' They see us boast and lie to smooth social relationships."

Consider how we expect a child to act when he opens a gift he doesn't like. We instruct him to swallow all his honest reactions and put on a polite smile. Talwar runs an experiment where children play games to win a present, but when they finally receive the present, it's a lousy bar of soap. After giving the kids a moment to overcome the shock, a researcher asks them how they like it. About a quarter of preschoolers can lie that they like the gift--by elementary school, about half. Telling this lie makes them extremely uncomfortable, especially when pressed to offer a few reasons why they like the bar of soap. Kids who shouted with glee when they won the Peeking Game suddenly mumble quietly and fidget.

1 comment:

Amy Hatfield said...

In a sermon recently Will quoted a study about lying. The researcher found that adults lie to 30% of the people we talk to. NOT "30% of adults lie", but adults consistently lie in 1 in 3 conversations! I know that I struggle with it...mostly to make myself look better or to make my story seem more dramatic.