Parenting by Lying

I recently read a story that put my parenting in check, so to speak. Kang Lee, a researcher of the University of Toronto, and his colleagues acknowledge that their work is preliminary but they’re bringing up an issue that is rarely studied. Parents usually say “honesty is the best policy,” but the study shows that mom and dad tend to stretch the truth when it comes to interacting with their own children. They are referring to this way of parenting as “parenting by lying.” The researchers suggest that tall tales could give your kids mixed messages. They also state that these “lies” can harm the parent-child bonds. This way of parenting can keep the kids from learning certain rules. If you always “lie” to your child to get them to do something, then they never learn why they need to do that something. It could prevent learning opportunities for the child. The researchers also say, however, that it is sometimes okay to be less than truthful by telling a “fib.” Like telling a child that a scribbled drawing is beautiful but urges the parents to think of alternatives to the fib.

The researchers ran two studies where parents and students commented on 9 hypothetical scenarios where a parent lied to a child to shape behavior or make the kid happy. An example of a scenario is; a parent is embarrassed by a child’s crying and says “the police will come to make sure you behave if you don’t stop crying now.” A scenario aimed at shaping the emotions of the child would be a child is told “you did a good job at cleaning the room after making things messier.” In one of the studies, there was about 130 undergraduates read each scenario as their parents and indicated on a scale of 1 to 7 whether their parents had done something similar to them. Nearly 90% of the students gave a rating of 5 or greater to at least one of the scenarios.

Parents lie for various reasons; ranging from benefiting the parent to protecting the child from scary issues. Children tend to behave in ways that are disruptive or can harm their long-term interests so the parents try out a range of strategies, including lying, to get the compliance they want. Lying is usually a spur of the moment decision and parents don’t think of how it will affect their child.

I read this article and I was surprised about how much of this article fit me. I am sure, as the study says; a lot of parents are guilty of it. We don’t think of what we are doing or the real reason behind it but we do. I was guiltier of it when my kids were younger because I didn’t want to answer a long list of “whys” as toddlers do go through that stage. My kids are older now and it is a little easier to explain why I want them to do something or not to do something. This article will definitely be in my head the next time I think I need to tell a “fib” to get my child to do what I want.